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This is somewhat disingeneous. Twitters efforts in the developing world were only to make sure everyone had access, and nobodys voice was squashed. It didnt bow down to dictatorial takedown requests, and allowed dissenters voices to be heard, thus enabling the revolutions that followed.

The game they are playing now is arbitrating content, and putting labels on things to guide the narrative. Regardless if they are right or not, as they are in the case with Trump its a very, very different game.

But it's dangerous to present the media as being an official source of election results.

1) That they are arbitrating content, like what you mentioned with Trump

2) That they are not arbitrating content enough, giving platform to climate change denialism, conspiracy theories, far right radicalization, and genocide [0].

So sure, they can return to their original stance and censor nobody. I don't think people would be too happy with them when the world gets more genocide-y and violent protests break out fuelled by conspiracy theories regarding the health of the elections.

So to recap: moderating and not moderating content on their platforms are both subject to serious criticisms. Right now, social media companies are trying to strike a balance, but the result is that they are angering both sides. If they choose a side (all content is allowed / we will moderate the content as closely as HN is moderated), they other side will be angrier at them. They were happy not doing moderation when the negative impacts were only affecting non-western countries, but now that it is also affecting western countries, they are more clearly seeing the negative sides and they have moved more to the middle.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

I think the key dishonesty in your comment, whether you're aware of it or not, is this idea that "moderation, badging, or editing" is what would be "amplifying" libel. What sense does that make? How does removing a post that, say, promotes the KKK in a woodworking forum have anything to do with a user possibly-falsely claiming in the public forum that "Joe's Tables and Chairs" doesn't use walnut like they claim?

It's a bizarre claim you're making to justify tremendous government overreach in forcing tiny forums and a billion other websites like it on the web to adopt your preferred speech policies.

Edit: And by the way, I'm being very generous with my examples. For one, I'm assuming you're okay with removing ILLEGAL content, such as child porn, without the website owners being subject to lawsuits for libel and other things -- since they're required to remove those things regardless of 230. But also, what about very legal porn? Or what if a Nintendo Switch game forum removes somebody who posts "first!" as a reply to every thread?

If I'm misreading you, and your preferred policy is instead that these websites should be responsible for claims THEY make -- such as, if the owners call a user a Nazi -- well that's already CURRENT LAW! 230 doesn't grant protection there now. But they're not calling people Nazis -- also, I don't think that lawsuit would go far for reasons based in libel law -- so this never comes up. If you're saying they're "implying" people are Nazi's simply by removing content based on hate speech policies, again, 230 doesn't really apply there. It'd still fail under our libel laws, and any suit would fail on the merits.

Now, maybe you want to rewrite libel laws, too! That'd be a big government approach to even FURTHER regulate free speech, but it'd be difficult to write a law that made it possible to be sued just for implying somebody is a Nazi for something they wrote. Certainly it wouldn't pass Constitutional muster, so you'd have to rewrite the Constitution, too. The only Justice who has shown any openness to re-interpreting libel laws to further restrict speech is Justice Thomas and you'd have to go FAR beyond what he's called for.