The Night of the Short Fingers saw many of the US's largest tech companies blocking Trump and trumpist platforms like Parler, provoking a storm of punditry about What It All Means for the tech companies to have taken this content moderation step.
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The best expert I know on the subject is @jilliancyork, my @EFF colleague. She's published "an ongoing list" of "everything pundits are getting wrong about this current moment in content moderation."
As Parler disappears from the Android and Ios app stores and faces being kicked off of Amazon's (and other) clouds, people who worry about monopolized corporate control over speech are divided over What It Means.
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There's an obvious, trivial point to be made here: Twitter, Apple and Google are private companies. When they remove speech on the basis of its content, it's censorship, but it's not GOVERNMENT censorship. It doesn't violate the First Amendment.
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And yes, of course it's censorship. They have made a decision about the type and quality of speech they'll permit, and they enforce that decision using the economic, legal and technical tools at their disposal.
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