We have long reached the point where, if we want to keep making analogies between social media and analogue media (pun intended), then we need to compare social

We have long reached the point where, if we want to keep making analogies between social media and analogue media (pun intended), then we need to compare social media to a publication with an editor. Demonetization, age-gating, recommendation engines, bans, shadowbans and their subtler varieties are many-2-many media's equivalent of an editor. Every one impacts the distribution of a video on youtube. Every one of these also impacts what content gets made/posted, because views are like currency. It doesn't matter if it's algorithmic, and it doesn't matter if there are other reasons for (eg) demonetisation to exist. It's still an editor. You need to make the editor happy to succeed on youtube. The single difference between an editor and a censor is scale. If you edit all the magazines, magazines are censored. The innocuous type example for censorship is (as usual) pornography. IDK what the consequences of posting pornography and its juniors (nudity, etc) on youtube, but they're obviously sufficient to make youtube mostly nudity free. It's not because no one wants raunchy videos. The same toolkit can be used (and is) to make any kind of content more or less prevalent on youtube. It's funny that "section 230" is being mentioned by so many under informed politicians and pundits. Changing 230 is unlikely to "fix" the problem, considering that most politicians obviously don't even understand the problem. But section 230 at least captures the main part of the problem. Youtube is not "dumb pipes." Youtube is a content business, and they have a lot of control over content. It's not direct, "delete this segment" control like they have at FOX, but it is editing nonetheless. At youtube, twitter or FB scale, editing is censorship.