What about when the private company is bigger than multiple countries combined?
This whole “it’s a private company, so it can do what it wants” misses the point: These companies are so massive that if they kick you off, they can ruin your life. You may think that’s ok because it’s affecting the “degenerates”, but what about when it happens to you? There’s hundreds(?) of articles about how Google kicked people off their platform for no reason.
Look at the (somewhat) recent Markiplier incident where people were banned for spamming the chat despite Markiplier telling them to spam. It only got resolved because he was big enough that Google would listen.
Saying it’s ok to censor because it’s legal and it affects the “bad people” is the same argument that people use to justify police violence: “They wouldn’t beat up someone if they didn’t have it coming for them.” Because we all know that bad things only happen to bad people.
Yes, the First Amendment only applies to the government, but free speech as a concept is a thing too, and should be fought for, regardless of who is negatively affected.
If these people are burning down towers, send them to jail. But a random nobody who is just spouting conspiracy theories? Ignore them. Conspiracy theorists will always exist. They always have, and they always will. If you want to help them, you aren’t helping my pushing them down; You’re just making their views stronger. Education fixes idiots, not censorship.
It's not true that education fixes idiots, however much you may wish it. Pushing them down stops more people stumbling on their material. The idea that free public debate will stamp out bullshit is a bust. It's failed. Debate, facts and education don't matter for shit against a torrent of nonsense. See for example the antivax folks.
You are content that society plays whack-a-mole with tower burners while the people that actually cause the problem spread their lies and usually make a very nice living fleecing the people they recruit. All enabled by tech platforms run by private companies that you would constrain from acting for some bizarre reason.
It's not that it's ok to censor - removing people from youtube is not censorship. Publishers don't have to publish books they don't want to, newspapers are not obliged to publish articles by antivaxxers, google have no duty whatsoever to provide a platform for lies about 5G and coronavirus.
There is no free speech issue here. I am not obliged to let you stand in my yard and yell, even if it's the best spot in the neighborhood.
You’re again ignoring the size of the space. If you owned all the publicly available land in a city, and stopped just me from protesting on it, that’s a free speech violation. When YouTube first started, this wasn’t an issue, but now it is.
Also, I’ll say it again: free speech and the First Amendment are different things. I recognized that in my post, but you seem content to blur the line between the two in the name of censorship.
I'm not American, I'm not really interested in the details of your first amendment. The difference is between government telling you that you can't speak or spread ideas and a publishing platform taking a decision not to carry your pernicious lies.
I'm fine with the latter. It's their commercial choice and it's a benefit to society in this case.
Are you going to get upset at Penguin and tell them it's censorship when they don't publish your novel too? Or maybe Barnes and Noble?
It's not censorship or a free speech violation, it carries no legal penalties and they are free to shout elsewhere. Private platforms are under no obligation to propagate this crap, indeed (as with more traditional media) it seems to me more of a moral obligation not to allow such webs of lies and fantasy to propagate.