While Americans seem obsessed with defining "free speech" as being exactly the same thing as the 1st Amendment, it might help to ask exactly why the 1st Amendme

While Americans seem obsessed with defining "free speech" as being exactly the same thing as the 1st Amendment, it might help to ask exactly why the 1st Amendment is a good idea. JS Mill argued that censorship is wrong on a rights basis, that it leads to bad ideas being unchallenged, and it leads to people not being able to understand the reason why ideas are rejected. If censorship by a government is harmful, how is deplatforming by a near-monopoly different? I suspect some left-wingers argue this in a hypocritical way, because they think it will "trigger the conservatives" to force them to attack the actions of private companies, but this is hardly a good argument.