It wasn't quite what the parent was saying, but basically here we're advocating that YouTube amounts to the public sphere in a way that other sites do not.

To be a little extreme: If we limited your freedom of speech by saying you can speak freely, but only in your own house, then that would still effectively curtail your rights. Whilst being technically true that you'd still have the right to speak, it wouldn't be in the spirit of freedom of speech.

This situation seems similar to me.

I think there's an argument to say, for the biggest providers of web communications, that if you would be allowed to stand on the street corner and say your bit that those providers shouldn't be allowed to prevent you speaking that 'bit' either.

Obviously as with IRL speech you have no right to an audience; none of us need listen. And, the provider has no curtailment of providing counter-points adjacent to your "speech", just as counter-protest is a normal part of protesting.

This ability to speak in ostensibly public forums is a natural and necessary part of democracy. IMO we should act to maintain that.

I'd add a couple of provisos:

# warnings on extreme content are fine

# the platform can demand those who are "speaking" be identified by name and nationality