A side note: foreign propaganda is not worse than domestic propaganda. Swarms of dedicated activists using rioting and other violence to achieve political goals (the dictionary definition of terrorism), in collusion with a sympathetic tech industry that suppresses any dissenting thought, is propaganda and it does influence elections. When these companies do things like ban Trump, they are illegally making a campaign contribution without abiding by the laws of campaign finance. When they do things like censor discussions of the lab leak theory, they propagandize the entire world by freeing the CCP of the bare minimum for accountability.
I am not a fan of any approach here and largely agree with you.
Media censorship did very well exist in pre-tech journalism as well and was more blatant. Eg. Iraq war WMD claims etc. Big tech censorship mirrors this but in a very limited manner since we know it is happening at any point in time and such information is available outside of the major platforms, which wasn't the case pre mainstream internet.
Ultimately, big tech regulation of content is similar to how a WSJ or NYT would manage what they publish. They've been forced into this position with all the criticism over the last few years - it isn't something they wanted to invest in. It looks more like censorship because of the stepping back from the previously laissez faire approach to content, whereas NYT's baseline was self regulation (so it wasn't as apparent). Big tech media is privately held like a bar or a restaurant and in my opinion have every right to control who is on the platform and what is not ok to say - if one doesn't like it - they can leave.
