1. Content creators. People that share viewpoints. They are motivated by influencing others who read their pieces.
2. Content consumers. People that read what is published by creators. You can split these in 2 groups:
2a. Non-activist consumers. They don't have much free time and generally just skip over something they don't like. They are the majority.
2b. Activist consumers. They have lots of free time and want their share of influence. By influencing what content creators can write they feel an influence over what non-activist consumers can consume.
3. Providers. They provide platforms connecting content creators and consumers. They generally just care about making money and rely on partnerships with other providers (banks, payment processors, hosting companies, domain registries, etc). They would gladly cut off business that brings negative PR to them.
So what is happening recently is a very small vocal minority of activist consumers is getting increased control over what content creators (1) can share to regular consumers (2a). They do it by forcing big providers (banks, cloud providers, etc) to cut ties with smaller providers that are not aligned with the activist consumers' viewpoints. Hence, many other providers are forced to self-censor in fear of losing access to banking and other vital services.
It's a rather weird negative selection process powered by the social media. Instead of encouraging the unhappy unproductive people to learn from their more successful peers and knock off what worked for them, we are giving them increasing control over the media space, so they can make their views (that lead to unhappiness) more mainstream, resulting in more unhappiness and more social tension.
Back in the day conservatives alleged that “free inquiry” was a pretext and universities were a Trojan horse for radical leftism. This strain of thought vindicates those critics.