Violent riots have happened many times based on media lies. That part is not novel.

agreed. nothing novel about people lying to convince other people to do something.

what’s novel is the centralized nature of social media (in terms of # of people reached from a single source) and the fact that some incredibly wealthy companies control these sources and face an existential risk if their platforms are used to create enough civil unrest that whoever ends up controlling the government is convinced that these companies are too dangerous to leave unregulated.

Exactly. These companies want to avoid government regulation / oversight. They are taking proactive actions to lessen the blame that would be assigned to them and thus (hopefully) avoid future regulatory action.

The problem I see is that they are walking directly in to oversight through their concerted actions. They are going to end up being labeled public utilities (identity, max comm, public market have already been labeled so).

At this point wouldn't that be better? They're used as such.

I am not saying it is better or worse, but I would say not one of them wants to be regulated as such. So they are setting themselves up for a result they are trying to avoid. Perhaps it is unavoidable, and actually for the better.

you are ignoring the “why”.

They really aren't. Look at the alternative narratives pushed recently about how all the Founders were raging slavers.

Many, in fact, were not, even if some participation in the practice at the time. Look at the pushing of anti-Western intellectualism and rejection of the basic tools of logical reasoning, which trace their roots far back to the Ancient Greeks, for being the "Master's Tools" to ensure supremacy.

At the end of every disagreement is violence as the final method of conflict resolution. That these ideas are pushed, is just another log on the fire. Part of classical logic and rhetoric was teaching the ability to utilize them to defuse and avoid violent resolution of disagreement through reference to an objective or common reality.

You may not think the above poster has a point, but they most certainly do.

They may or may not have a point about whether or not some academic pursuits are fact based.

But their leap to "if X is banned and Y is similar to X and Y isn't banned then X can't be banned" is still wrong because it is not the similarities between X and Y that is causing X to be banned.

It is the fact that X is being used to inspire violent opposition to the government that is the source of the banning.

Or to make it much less abstract:

A bunch of people broke into one of the most important buildings in the US government, killed a police officer and wounded others who were trying to stop them, stole stuff including computers belong to high ranking government officials, broke stuff, humiliated the government, and had every appearance of being willing to cause physical harm to political leaders because of X.

X was supported by social media.

Social media hosts reasonably concluded that the government may cause them to suffer negative consequences if they did not do something to prevent this from happening again.

Because of Y, some people have gotten into fights on the internet and a few individuals have found their employment and social options constrained. The government is not nearly as interested in this.

It's getting banned because of the politician's fallacy, and people with conveniently placed levers capable of being pulled. Nothing more, nothing less.