Either you're a platform or a publisher, and the difference is whether the company is legally liable for the user's content.
Twitter claims itself to legally be a platform, and therefore on a legal basis should uphold free speech (not to mention on a moral basis).
If they want to be a publisher then they can do that and destroy their site, and everyone will migrate off to competitors.
This trope is so old and so wrong that there's a techdirt article specifically written to debunk it and save everyone the irreplaceable moments of their lives spent arguing about it[1].
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
Either way from a moral perspective doesn't change the fact that a platform censoring viewpoints is a violation of the principal of free speech, and morally reprehensible in a free democratic society. Twitter tried to be the Orwellian Ministry of Truth, and I'm glad that Twitter's new management recognizes the error of their former ways and is committed to not repeating the same Orwellian mistakes.
Agree to disagree here - Twitter and every other social media site are essentially complimentary printing presses in the middle of town that some private party pays for and allows everyone to use, with some conditions. In a free and democratic society, we're all free to buy our own printing presses that don't come with those conditions. With your own personal printing press you're free to print anything you want, hate speech and all, up to the extreme limits of the First Amendment. You're just not entitled to no-strings-attached use of someone else's printing press. You're also not entitled to an audience - if your own free speech platform is something like 8chan, you're going to get 8chan levels of traffic, not Twitter levels of traffic.
Twitter's general policy was about the same as Fox News'[1].
[1] https://help.foxnews.com/hc/en-us/articles/233194608-Do-you-...
I'm arguing that a platform like Twitter that operates under the pretense of accessibility to all and freedom should uphold itself to a higher standard of free speech than the blatant one-sided censorship it engaged in during COVID. This would make the product better for its users, and be better for society.
Of course legally they can decide to adopt the principles of the Chinese Communist Party, but I find that morally reprehensible and clearly I'm not the only one.
Fox News is a right-wing propaganda media outlet. Just because its articles have comments sections doesn't make it a social media platform.
They don't operate under that pretense at all. They explicitly reserve the right to delete content from their site that they find to be harmful or offensive, and permanently ban anyone they deem a bad actor, and they always have done so.
You can try to paint them as commie totalitarians, but the fact remains that they're not censoring debates on which is the better political philosophy, they're making good faith efforts to keep people from getting killed by health misinformation or harassed by hateful conduct. They don't have to do a perfect job at that, either, just as long as they're genuinely making good faith efforts.