Technology

There's a fundamental Americanized understanding of censorship as de facto BAD. So in order to justify doing what is very obviously a form of censorship, we don't establish a justifiable and transparent process for censoring content. We just redefine the thing we're doing as "Not Censorship".

At the same time, with so much of social media in the hands of a tiny minority of mega-advertisers, the debate is pointless. We don't get to decide what is or is not censured. The advertisers do. Smears against ethnic groups or religious movements or people of a particular gender or persuasion are only prohibited when they interfere with the distribution of marketing materials.

Now that advertisers have sufficiently A/B tested their marketing material, there's no reason to explicitly prohibit bigoted content because you can simply cloister particular communities into atomized walled gardens of advertising media.

I can sell Bud Light Fuck The Trans cans to the evangelical chuds, I can sell Bud Light Israel Did Nothing Wrong to Zionists, and I can sell Bud Light Communism Will Win to the Tankies. Everyone can have their own boutique Bud Light experience and sales of piss beer can keep going up forever.