But what of the platforms that make my forum possible? The Cloudflares the protect from DDoS, the DigitalOceans that provide the servers, the ISPs that provide transit, the Facebooks that provide social media support? Should they have the freedom to decide they don't like my forum and kick me off? I've come to believe that the more general purpose a service is and the more communication it controls, the more harmful the business's freedom to censor is for a free society.
Yes. Their infrastructure is still private property, and you're using it to provide your own service. Similarly, if you rent a shop space in a food plaza and start a car mechanic's garage there, the owner of the food plaza will kick you out.
That the government has a hard-on for monopolies doesn't change the fact that you're still building your service on private infrastructure.
I would say the opposite: No. While it might be _legal_ for them to kick me off, I don't think a private company should decide what I say on their platform. For example, should my ISP block websites of competing ISPs if they so choose? What about posting on Facebook that Comcast sucks, should I get my internet disabled for that?
I think a better analogy would be getting kicked out for serving food that the plaza owner doesn't approve of.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capit...
I think it's important to distinguish between the two. Censorship, that is the government proscribing or restricting what people say and thinks in general/public/day-to-day life, is an egregious attack on people's liberty. I think we shouldn't tolerate any limitations on free speech.
Moderation, or companies determining a code-of-conduct for the properties and platforms they control, is the same as someone telling you to shut up or get out of their house if you say something that offends them. I think what's important there is that the code of conduct is clearly stated, objective, and enforced even-handedly, which hasn't always been the case as of late.