[humanfromearth]

Instead of creating some sort of government/non-profit censorship API and giving up the controls to content censorship, they are playing this censor role that will never have an end. Nobody will ever be satisfied. If they were smart they would say something like the ISPs: Hey, we're just providing the infra, we don't control the content and point the finger at the government.

Is it really profitable to have this information flow controller? Don't they just want to sell ads?

Look, I know it's not that simple. But why not do this?

[inglor_cz]

They need to control the content at least in a rudimentary way, they would be swamped by waves of commercial spam otherwise.

Ofc, once you can remove classic Viagra ads, you established your ability to control content to some degree. From that point on, you cannot really assert that you are a common carrier.

You could assert your allegiance to the 1st amendment, though.

[rcoveson]

What's happened in the past is the old media or social media or both will latch on to your most outrageous user. They'll make headlines about them, all the while including your company's name in the story. It will get bad enough that advertisers threaten to pull out to show their support for the cause of de-platforming evil.

The platform that chooses not to de-platform its worst users has lower fitness than the platform that goes along with it. Would you rather your ad revenue look like that of Twitter or that of Gab?

[free_rms]

Because then they get stuck defending scoundrels, and it's untenable. The ACLU has (had?) the guts to defend a nazi's right to free speech, a profit seeking corp is less likely.

So they get pushed into this position where they're stuck at the border of acceptable where half the people think they're censoring and half think it's only right.

[the-dude]

Because advertisers.