I find it terrifying that there's a large portion of the population that encourages and wants them to do this.

These companies are maintaining systems that are analogous to message boards.

Why not just view this as moderation?

This viewpoint makes it a lot less sinister, in my opinion.

Therein lies the problem though. There seems to be a growing number of people who use sinisterness as a heuristic for the truth. Instead of Occam's Razor, where the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation, it is the most damning answer that is most likely correct.

Let them? First rule of internet is don't trust things on the Internet. Cross reference and double check. Everyone makes mistakes or lies.

When the whole hydroxychloroquine scandal was going on, I tried to cross reference and double check. Unfortunately, this meant I had to use DuckDuckGo rather than a Google product, since they were burying anything that spoke of it positively, including some of the original research papers.

It's hard to cross reference when one of the lines of the cross has been deleted.

How can you cross reference and double check if only one side is presented and the internet is the main means by which one double checks? This is the conundrum I haven't figured out.

> only one side is presented and the internet

Wait, only one side is presented ... on the internet? I must be misunderstanding you.

Unless you're being snarky, or referring to the Internet 'as controlled by google/youtube', and the fact that they're cancelling everyone that disagrees with them.

"The internet"? It's just YouTube. He's a senator, he has one of the biggest and most un-cancelable platforms in the world.

That doesn't justify selectively banning him at all. We could agree if we ban everyone with a political mandate perhaps. Fair and square.

Wouldn't support it intrinsically, but at least we could rid of these weasel excuses for why such measures are allegedly justified.

What platform is that?

They can call a press conference whenever they want and get national news coverage. They can write down anything they want and hand it to the clerk for inclusion in the Congressional Record. They have email and physical mailing lists. The CAN-SPAM act doesn't cover political calls or texts, either.

Go to the library. (Hopefully you still have one.)

No the democrats shut mine down and are taxing us for them anyway

Can you write to your local representative?

After several calls with my Oregon house representative, she no longer responds to my e-mails or calls. Can't contact her via social media because I've been blocked there.

I've thought about going to her office but those are closed down too.

Of course, if you just block constituents you can just ... do nothing and in Oregon, you'll be re-elected because there's a big D next to your name. Of course, there's also no non-D candidate running, because it's a one party state. I imagine this is what it must be like to vote in North Korea. Oregon law mandates that one must run under the purview of a political party. Forming a party requires a large set of requirements that means only the democrats can run in many places because there's simply not enough of an opposition to form a cohesive opposition. This prevents independent candidates from running.

There is no incentive for my representatives to change the status quo.

Eventually, I'm guessing I'll vote with my feet, but I don't understand why I should have to move to an area in which the GOP runs unopposed in order to experience the 'other' side. I mean... it's not like the GOP is perfect and a uni-party GOP jurisdiction would be much better. What I want is actual politics with people competing for my vote, instead of people who assume they'll get it.