The big tech companies are facing intervention by the state at this point. Being broken up or regulated or, depending on country, just outright banned, could really clamp down on profits.

Their advertisers wouldn't much like that. Pharma being one of their larger advertisers, allowing videos about cheap out of patent drugs that may prevent someone from taking a vaccine is in direct opposition to this model.

This risks advertisers who do not want their brands associated with this content leaving the platform entirely. YouTube is not only trying to sell ads, they’re trying to remain “respectable” so the advertising whales keep spending.

You ever heard of the YouTube channel "dick or dildo"? YouTube doesn't remove content that is not respectable, gross, unsettling, no the criteria always seems to be certain opinions and lines of discussion. Advertisers have advertised on YouTube just fine with all the crazy wacko content on it before. " targeted advertising" is wonderful in the sense that advertisers get to decide what sorts of content their ads appear on, so they never have to worry about being associated with something they don't want to be.

This line of reasoning doesn't make sense under even the lightest scrutiny, it doesn't go along with what we actually see YouTube doing.

Au contraire, it does make sense. There have been a number of adpocolypse events that kicked off when advertisers became worried about certain content

Media platforms have always been gatekeepers. Freedom of speech is great, freedom of mass speech is decidedly not. This is super controversial on HN but I think the Internet without some form of restrictions on mass speech is a net negative for human society. Otherwise you’re just daring bad actors to take advantage of the situation.

Companies doing this is arguably preferred to governments doing it, but only just barely.

> ...freedom of mass speech is decidedly not.

That's one assertion. I don't buy it. If users have the tools to decide what information they're exposed to I think that solves the problem just fine.