[0] https://www.city-journal.org/html/platform-or-publisher-1588...
This is a decent article on the subject: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=1804a02d-a015...
tl;dr: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 states, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
The courts have upheld on multiple occasions (Pennie v. Twitter, Inc.; Fields v. Twitter, Inc.; Murphy v Twitter, Inc.) that Twitter is a provider of an interactive computer service.
No, it isn't; that's the point of the hypothetical. We're talking about Twitter banning certain candidates. If they're not banning any candidates, then there's no issue and nothing to discuss here.
Sorry, not buying your use of the Humpty Dumpty principle here. Providing the service to some candidates at the same price as the rest of the planet, but not providing it to other candidates at all, does equate to a campaign contribution. Twisting the meaning of "every" doesn't change that.
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/filing-re...
> An in-kind contribution is a non-monetary contribution. Goods or services offered free or at less than the usual charge result in an in-kind contribution.
Except it isn't, as Tim Pool demonstrated on the Joe Rogan Podcast when he ripped Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde a new one, with examples.
You're not entitled to the services of any vendor, however, in pre-election period media outlets are (in some countries) prohibited to have any political ads (including pseudo-ads like "accidental talk show interviews with the candidate we like") unless multiple specific conditions are met, one of which is equal access to all parties/candidates. Even if you hate them. If you don't like these conditions, you can refuse to participate in political ads at all, which most media companies won't do because it's a decent source of revenue.
One way how this is soemtimes implemented is that before the pre-election period, you have to submit a public offer for what conditions and prices political adds will be available to any and all candidates; you can refuse to make such a public offer because you hate some of these candidates, but then you're not allowed to place advertisements from the candidates you like as well. Or if you're a foreign company (like Facebook) that doesn't care about some elections at all and does not submit such an offer, then all candidates are prohibited to buy political ads from you.
If your media company wants to support a particular candidate, then the only legal way is to donate money (which gets appropriately reported) and the candidates can (within specific campaign funding limits!) buy ads on equal conditions at equal prices. There's no "corporate money is free speech" assumption like it seems to be in USA, doing "free ad publicity" for candidates is a violation of campaign finance laws and would incur significant fines (IIRC double or triple the market value of that publicity).