Well "legitimate" is open for interpretation.

I'd say this administration has resonated with its base by treating bans as politically-motivated.

They are politically motivated. For example, I’ve been banned from Twitter for defending Kyle Rittenhouse, who engaged in lawful self defense against a number of violent assailants. Why? Because the left has decided it serves their interests to paint him as a mass murderer (indeed Facebook has an official policy that he is a mass murderer).

Facebook also regularly censors viral pro-trump content and project veritas has exposed this.

I wish it weren’t so, but it is. I’ve experienced it firsthand.

I've seen a lot of retellings of why someone was banned that end up being a bit generous, particularly if experienced first hand.

It's tough to take these at face value because we trust and believe in the things that define our ideology and take any challenge to our presentation of that as an attack on the underlying ideology.

I'm guessing that's because "viral pro Trump content" is very frequently xenophobic& racist content, includes calls to violence and is full of conspiracy theories. If a site doesn't moderate that sort of stuff, it frequently goes to shit, I know inadequate moderation on that front had made reddit much much worse.

Also this sort of stuff can lead to real world violence like when Facebook let violent vigilantes organize on their site it led to Kyle Rittenhouse killing two people.

"To promote free and open discourse online and encourage greater transparency between platforms and users." That seems legitimate to me; the mechanisms of democratic government rely on free speech and the marketplace of ideas existing in practice as well as in theory. If undesirables were not only kept out of the town square, but kept out by a secret system that not even they were told about, that would be obviously damaging to democracy; yet that's what's happening online.

The "undesirables" can make their own websites, which are totally protected from the government by the First Amendment. The owners of the shadow-banning websites should also have the right to decide what thoughts are exposed on their website.

I get to take down any flyers on my fence, even if I leave up the ones I like. Or I can vandalize the ones I dislike, maybe entirely changing their message. My fence.

> The "undesirables" can make their own websites, which are totally protected from the government by the First Amendment.

No they're not; the government has already shown itself able and willing to do an end-run around the First Amendment by e.g. pressurising payment processors to refuse to do business with such websites.

> The owners of the shadow-banning websites should also have the right to decide what thoughts are exposed on their website.

> I get to take down any flyers on my fence, even if I leave up the ones I like. Or I can vandalize the ones I dislike, maybe entirely changing their message. My fence.

If you're hosting a private website you can privately decide what goes on it. If you're holding yourself out as a public communications provider and want the benefits of section 230, you're being granted special privileges by society and you need to hold up your end of the bargain by hosting the kind of uncomfortable discussion that society needs.

>No they're not; the government has already shown itself able and willing to do an end-run around the First Amendment by e.g. pressurising payment processors to refuse to do business with such websites.

I cannot see how a change to a law that's proposed by the enforcement arm of government will actually protect people from abuses done by that same enforcement arm. If they act in bad faith now, why assume good faith will follow?

>you need to hold up your end of the bargain by hosting the kind of uncomfortable discussion that society needs.

I don't think Amazon's user reviews are where uncomfortable discussions need to happen. But I do think the government demanding what should be discussed on servers owned by private citizens is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

> I cannot see how a change to a law that's proposed by the enforcement arm of government will actually protect people from abuses done by that same enforcement arm. If they act in bad faith now, why assume good faith will follow?

This seems like an argument that no government will ever reduce its own power, and so constitutional protections, due process etc. are all pointless. Even a single arm of the government is far from a monolith, and the boundaries of what government should and shouldn't do are always evolving. I'm sure this proposal isn't coming purely from the good of this administration's heart; part of it is public pressure, and part of it is the consideration that they may no longer be in power come November. But realpolitik is always a factor; good laws are still good laws.

> I don't think Amazon's user reviews are where uncomfortable discussions need to happen.

I'm sure a lot of vital IRL political discussion happens in the checkout queue at the supermarket (I'm sure that sounds like a joke, but I'm completely serious). As life moves online, we need a corresponding public sphere.

> But I do think the government demanding what should be discussed on servers owned by private citizens is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Private citizens acting in their capacity as private citizens are still free to discuss whatever they like, or ban whatever discussion they like. If you want to have a capaciously moderated website that's fine, but such a website will not and cannot be a Section 230 public communications provider.

Shadowbans make it harder for users who have been affected to report these outcomes.