Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wanting to improve their news algorithm to favor more trustworthy sources is not a violation of free speech. "Free speech" guarantees you the right to say what you want, as long as it doesn't interfere with others' freedoms (i.e., making death threats or yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater) "Free speech" does not guarantee you a platform for your protected free speech. I have the right to claim blatantly false…
The first amendment does not prevent Google (or any other company) from restricting speech. That is a very low bar. The distinction between government and private groups is not a clean as you might think. At a large enough scale, private groups can start to take on a role in society that resembles that of a government, should we not then expect them to be held to a standard that resembles that we expect of government…
The distinction between government and private groups is
not a clean as you might think. At a large enough scale,
private groups can start to take on a role in society that
resembles that of a government, should we not then expect
them to be held to a standard that resembles that we expect
of governments?
In this case we're talking about Google's all-hands discussion about weeding out bad-faith actors. They weren't trying to silence people who simply thought Trump was the better candidate, they were talking about something very close to spam filtering. "Silence Republicans" is something that (even as a liberal) is something I'd be absolutely opposed to; filtering out outright fraudulent news sources (from any part of the political spectrum) is something we should all support.
We've been doing something similar as a country for many years. Notice how tabloids like the National Enquirer aren't typically lumped in with "real" news sources at the newsstand.