That's true. But there are two big reasons why we hold governments to those standards: they hold significant lethal power in enforcing their policies, and they

That's true. But there are two big reasons why we hold governments to those standards: they hold significant lethal power in enforcing their policies, and they have no competition in their domain. Corporations absolutely quality for one of those. If every game manufacturer starts enforcing draconian free speech rules, players have no recourse beside "don't play". That's an option. If it gets bad enough, hopefully "good business" kicks in and they pull back. The big problem is the reasoning behind why these policies are in place. They aren't really doing it because they think it'll lead to better business; these games are already ridiculously popular, and are approaching the carrying capacity of their respective markets. Instead, they're implementing them because they think its the morally correct thing to do. That's a very dangerous road to go down, because its politically very hard to reverse a policy like this. Once you start restricting what people can say under the guise of something as buzzwordy and pure as "preventing toxic behavior", no one will be "that guy" who says "we're losing business because people are afraid to even speak, we should pull back". All it takes is one softer soul to call that person a bigot or an enabler of toxic behavior, and they're fired. I worry about platforms like Twitch, where "twitch chat" has become such a meme that it almost defines the platform. Its not about whether that definition is good or bad; its about trying to fundamentally change who you are. YouTube tried it with their comments section. No good discussion ever happens there. Not before their change, not after. But at least before it was fun and people used it. In essence, they destroyed legitimate business value in the pursuit of perceived business value based on moral righteousness, that perceived business value was never realized, and now they can't go back.