>>unsurprisingly their priority becomes keeping those who might regulate them happy.

Unsurprising, and not necessarily unwanted. IDK if you mean people or politicians by "they," but (in a democracy) they're the ones who make rules. Whether it's mandating access, limiting access, moderating, censoring, allowing freedom of speech or just mandating that stated policies are followed consistently... I think social media is unquestionably a "public concern" currently.

That doesn't mean that I support Twitter censoring on behalf of Modi. But, it does demonstrate on how broken the new media is. Zuck and Dorsey have no sense of responsibility, and no idea how to take responsibility even if they did have the sense.

It goes without saying that Zuck and Dorsey have no journalistic ethic. They're not journalism, they just ate journalism. No counterpart to a journalistic ethic, or even a lip-service to one. So... they control the important chunk of media worldwide, and they truly don't know what an ethical approach would even be.

Makes Murdoch look like a saint.

A big part of the problem here, ironically, is that Twitter and FB can get away with absolute arbitrariness. It makes it easy for thuggish political types to get their way.

Companies who run social media sites are not in a position to be journalists, or even editors. They are mostly moderators, trying to navigate around regulatory rocks and PR disaster storms. I suppose they would happily not curb any speech, just because it increases engagement (and with it, ad revenues).

Actual journalists, that is, people reporting things, are those who have to demonstrate the ethos. But in social media, the people who white the posts are the users, in other words, ourselves.

I suspect that's the point.