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I think there's a pretty wide gulf between that and government-enforced censorship, to the point that comparing the two seems a bit disingenuous.

"Twitter has even begun censoring political speech from public figures"

vs

"The FBI will require Twitter to censor political speech from public figures"

I think those two scenarios are eons apart.

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I disagree; I'd even say this is a peculiar blind spot in US political culture. Practically, it's probably easier to have a similar life in a non-US country than to have a similar life while avoiding these big platforms. Yes theoretically the US government has the ability to use violence against you while Twitter doesn't, but that doesn't seem to make a lot of difference to the practical impact - people are more worried about the government ruining their livelihood than locking them up, and that's something that Twitter can do just as well.

It is also disingenuous to refer to hate speech that breaks Twitter's rules as "political speech".

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