I'm one of those people who requires evidence for the assertion that there's some systemic left lean on any of those platforms.

I'm also able to observe plenty of speech by people who identify themselves as right-wing/conservative being propagated via Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

I'm also aware that some people like to make charges of oppression so they can "work the refs" in order to gain privileges.

> Another in a series of strawmen.

Strawman has a definition too. Just because there's something you don't like about it doesn't make it a strawman.

Censorship requires an idea actually being suppressed (and by the state). If that hasn't happened, what is happening is not censorship.

> Again, I called it soft censorship.

And again, I pointed out that this is a contradiction in terms -- the very phrasing admits that what is happening is not censorship, however much you'd like it conceptually associated without meeting the definition.

> The fact that these opinions exist on these platforms does not imply that they are not made more difficult to communicate.

Even if you're backing away from the idea that there are some viewpoints that are censored outright, the same question applies: do you have any evidence that "show more replies" systemically applies to any particular political pole? Because I can guarantee you I see "show more replies" across a wide range of topics, many of which are more or less apolitical (hey, here's one I just saw this happening, a thread about someone's divorce: https://twitter.com/moonbm_dmr/status/1512515632864145431 , oh hey, here's another one, gender reveal party: https://twitter.com/AriWRees/status/1512581194491183104 ), some of which are progressive as hell (here's one basically affirming a progressive vision of Christianity https://twitter.com/Brcremer/status/1512775185572671492 but it's cut short by "show more replies" insert is-this-censorship-butterfly-jpeg here).

But even if it were, the hypothetical you're talking about is no longer about censorship, but what is privileged. And Twitter's own free speech rights actually protect their decisions about what is privileged, actually let them choosing the structure of what they amplify and what they do not. They have the same rights that a political party or Fox News or any other private organization (explicitly partisan or not) have to determine how speech unfolds within their bounds.

That even extends to what they decide not to carry at all.

The authoritarians are those who suggest that a privately created and sustained platform be compelled to carry arbitrary speech. Compelled not to exercise their own preferences and opinions in moderating.

Compelled speech is not free speech. And compelled speech is therefore not anti-censorship.

> why else would it be done?

Off the top of my head because they think it helps engagement metrics with the platform as a whole, likely under some model with a law of diminishing returns for any given thread. Seems pretty obvious to me. But maybe that's only the kind of actual underlying technical dynamic that people who are thinking beyond partisanship and in principled analytical terms about this topic can see.

> my property is not a public square frequented by millions of people

Disneyland is frequented by millions too. It remains private.

Twitter is a forum, but it is not public. Those who run it can choose to run it in accordance with their own principles, within the bounds of law. Their property is as private as Disneyland's -- or as yours, choices about the scale of visitors they invite notwithstanding. They have as much right to set the terms within their places as you do with yours.

> world leaders like Trump, whom I'll remind you was banned from twitter.

Twitter has no general legal obligation to carry any individual's speech, so they could do this for any reason or no reason. As it happens, they chose to do it for specific reasons which were violations of their clearly articulate terms, and this after years of indulgence toward Trump crossing the line repeatedly.

> I don't care about your weak rationalization

Calling a rationale weak doesn't make it so. In fact, choosing to narrate your way to affirmation of your position is often a sign that you don't think you have a better tack.

> it's dishonest to pretend it isn't happening just because you agree with it,

I don't think it's happening because I haven't seen anyone present evidence that supports this position and because it is quite clear that conservative ideas are loudly and commonly represented. As for who's "pretending", observant readers will note that you keep avoiding/ignoring this point.

Some observant readers might even assume that the reason you imagine others are taking a position on twitter's policies "just because you agree with it" is because that's how the human being you know best from the inside out works, but that would surely be speculation.

> I guess it helps with your cognitive dissonance over authoritarianism?

As loose with the definition of authoritarianism as you've been with the definition of censorship, are you?

I believe that every person or institution has the legal and moral right to make decisions about which speech is valuable -- that this is itself a free speech right. I may be obligated to let others use their means to make speech, but I am in no way obligated to carry anyone's speech that I disagree with, and I am in no way forbidden from assigning different value to different speech when it comes to how I administer my means.

You appear to believe that under some circumstances, some private parties (conservatives?) should be able to forbid other private parties (Twitter?) from making systemic or individual judgments about how they carry, value, or present speech in fora that belongs to them. That sure seems more authoritarian to me.