Industrialists and authoritarians joining together to spread a victimization narrative centered around an imagined shadowy conspiracy which the narrative attaches to marginalized groups in society and those who advocate for those marginalized groups, as the followers of those industrialists and authoritarians are on the streets committing violence against those same marginalized groups should concern everyone, given the history of that pattern.
They silence voices. They don't free voices.
When they silence voices they always given a greater good justification like you are doing here.
It's remarkable how many people are so confused that they think it's authoritarian to NOT silence speech. It's exactly the opposite. Marginalized voices are who need free speech the most.
Authoritarians are often advocates for freedom (of speech and other things), but conveniently find excuses to exclude the things they oppose from the space of that “freedom”.
No, people coming together collectively pressure organizations to make changes is the free market solution. Authoritarians censor with the law.
>Or the people who just want everybody to be able to freely and openly express themselves?
You are more than able to freely and openly express yourself. There are thousands of websites and social media sites you can use, or you can just plain go outside and say whatever you want (for the most part). Businesses have always had the ability to decide what happens on their property (for the most part). It's fine for activists to try and pressure Twitter to make changes and if you don't like those changes, you can become a customer of a different vendor that will let you use whatever racial slurs you want. They are out there. Twitter is also able to not make changes and face the consequences of that.
Stop confusing 'censorship' with moderation.
I gotta say, if I was an authoritarian I'd absolutely love your definition. It's certainly convenient!
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ARTICLE 125. In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law:
freedom of speech;
freedom of the press;
freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings;
freedom of street processions and demonstrations.
These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights.
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That's from the 1936 constitution of the USSR, also known as "Stalin's Constitution."
https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/1936toc.h...
In times past our society was much more decentralized and so literally killing or physically intimidating people was really the only way to try to overtly impose yourself on others. Today, you can make it impossible for people to be able to openly communicate, destroy their businesses or ability to earn a livelihood, and basically just destroy their lives. Many have even been driven to suicide. And this can all be done safely from a distance and without ever resorting to anything even remotely illegal.
It's an authoritarian's dream scenario. What you may not appreciate is that authoritarians don't think themselves the bad guys just trying to maliciously impose their will on everybody. They, of course, always think they're creating a better world. This [1] is the Fascist Manifesto, which was the initial public doctrine upon which literal Fascism was framed in.
You might find you agree with most ideas there. I do as well. The reason Fascism came to be seen as little more than a slur is not because of their stated views, but because of their actions and behaviors. So too today. The small minority of people running around trying to censor people, get them fired, destroy their businesses, and just generally cause chaos unless you conform are not going to be go down on the proverbial "right side of history" even if their ideas, on paper, might be perfectly great.
WTF is a "shadow organization", can you please define that term you used?
Really, it just sounds like you have a problem with free speech and/or free association. If a group of people want to form an organization called Free Press (https://www.freepress.net/) and advocate for things they think are important, that's part of being in a free country.
They have a slick landing page, but there's nothing there about their efforts to influence advertisers and social media, and less so about who's paying them to do that stuff.
What do you mean by "efforts to influence"? You mean calling people like Elon Musk on the phone and asking them to do stuff? Or like sending emails to people on their mailing list asking them to boycott something?