David is right about private publishers like the firm that publishes Dr. Seuss having the right to publish or not publish whatever they wish. However, I’m not sure I would apply the same “private company” framework to the question of tech companies. In my ideal economy, all economic organizations would be voluntary associations and decentralized local communities, which means that people could de-platform or discriminate against anyone they pleased for any reason they wished. But that’s not the system we have now. Social media companies are piggybacking on public infrastructure, receive monopoly or oligopolistic privileges via intellectual property, subsidies courtesy of taxpayers, actively collaborate not only with the government but with law enforcement and intelligence, and are under pressure from the government to impose censorship. These companies are about as “private” as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Catholic Church of the middle ages.
–The right-wing battle against so-called “cancel culture” is really a fight against the free-market capitalism that the American right-wing claims to support.
