Because the current trend of private companies engaging in censorship is not really "voluntary" private action. A large contingent of the people pushing for cen

Because the current trend of private companies engaging in censorship is not really "voluntary" private action. A large contingent of the people pushing for censorship will not take no for an answer. If the companies will not "voluntarily" censor their platforms the "right way" then they will use the newly elected government to make them censor their platforms and punish them for their willful efforts to shirk their "duty" in the name of evil. The wave of censorship going on right now is about as voluntary as paying your taxes. That is not to say that censorship is evil on its face. Like taxes, it serves an important purpose especially in private discourse. HN would not be as it is without the tireless efforts at moderation and censorship in the name of pruning out low quality discourse. To disallow all voluntary content discrimination or censorship is to lose direction. However, the key distinction is that the vast majority of the censorship on HN is not backstopped by the threat of government censorship to comply. If the calls for censorship stopped at the private sector and did not threaten the intervention of the government if they did not get what they wanted then I would have absolutely no problem with these private companies silencing individuals in much the same way I have no problem with HN banning people. I suspect somebody will chime in saying that the censorship is now totally voluntary because they have realized just how bad the consequences of their existing policies are with the riots in the capital. To that I say, have you ever seen Zuckerberg talk about free speech [1]? Just look at 4:50 or so. 5:20, is literally a total refutation of the current arguments. At every step along this path he has spoken in favor of free speech and fought the calls for them to censor Facebook. As far as I can tell he is a true believer in the principles of free speech. There is no doubt in my mind that if he truly believed that the government would not intervene that he would not only not censor, he would immediately revert to their policies as of a few years ago with respect to censorship. Really this argument seems to come from people saying that the 1st Amendment only applies to the government, so private censorship is totally fine. True, but are you really following the spirit of the 1st Amendment if you threaten government censorship? If people really thought the government would not censor, then they would assign zero credibility to the threat and ignore it. That people truly consider the threat is an indication that they feel it might actually be acted upon. Also, I am not saying that government censorship is bad in all cases. There are cases where unlimited free speech may not be worth the consequences. However, such rules should always be carefully considered and we should not turn a blind eye to the fact that we are, in fact, using the government to stamp down on speech. It is with great regret that we should make such decisions since we can find no other alternative and we should acknowledge that we have engaged in evil to fight an even greater one. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP--X4GhuP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP--X4GhuP4