COVID matters as we generally agree that during public health crisises it is reasonable for the government to overstep bounds a little to reduce loss of life.

Objectively it is different.

Additionally you are going to have a hard time justifying that the federal government shouldn't do anything about disinformation. We cannot allow foreign adversaries to include our politics by saying "but the first amendment".

So while we cannot be too broad with our actions and any action should be carefully monitored for violation it isn't fundamental that the government cannot say "please don't give a platform to disinformation".

Generally speaking most of the things involved weren't deleted but deplatformed. Most commonly by not recommending them or adding a warning to them.

Deletion did occur but my understanding was it wasn't a significant portion of the actions taken by platforms.