That alone would be great. They should have to justify exactly why they removed someone. And by making it explicit, they open a pathway for legal action.

But more importantly, these platforms need to be declared public utilities and forced to be transparent. This is not controversial and is usually welcomed by the public when it happens. Most public utilities that we enjoy today started out as being completely private.

The fire dept would let your house burn down if you were late with your bills. The telegraph company would ban you from their private network if you were a journalist that criticized them. The electric companies would make you agree to onerous terms to get electricity. And currently we have this mess with private medical insurance companies and tech platforms.

It is time for us to nationalize Facebook.

This is the nature of the 1st amendment in the US. The government cannot restrain speech.

A private company was another matter. They can do whatever they want, within the boundaries of law. 1st amendment doesn't apply in this case.

The concern I had was that this would become "easier", and more frequent.

It has. This was the nature of my concern, that the slope would be more slippery.

Justifications for banning are getting "easier". Groups celebrate this deplatforming as "victories."

No one seems to worry much about the long term consequences of this. Well, Cloudfare did for a while, but then it stopped.

Right now, its hard for me to tell if bans are for ToS violations, or political wrongthink. I am troubled by this. ToS violations are generally fine, as long as the ToS aren't onerous. Most aren't. Wrongthink violations ... think of when the political winds shift, and when current rightthink becomes wrongthink.

Niemöller's poem[1] becomes an apt metaphor in this case.

[1] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...