“...and if Google is doing so (suppressing free speech), it’s not a problem because Google is a private company and not “the government” thus not a problem”
People on our side have to be VERY CAREFUL about accepting this rationale, as this is something that the Left will always throw at us, since they like to hit us in our ‘weak’ areas, one of them being the defense of private enterprise.
In this case, the thing to do is TURN IT AROUND and ask whether it would have been ok for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc. to shut off their telephone and Internet service to the Obama campaign a few months before the 2008 election - thereby crippling his campaign, because they felt that Obama was unqualified to become president (after all, his only time in federal office was less than 4 years in the Senate). By the Left’s rationale, that would have been just fine.
So, morally, they have nothing to stand on. Technically, by disabling the campaign of the opposition, they have made an IN-KIND POLITICAL CONTRIBUTION (to McCain, in this case, being 2008), and would be breaking the law, since corporations still cannot make political contributions (direct or in-kind...it’s basically the same).
This crap needs to end.
No-one is asking AT&T to suppress free-speech [although Net Neutrality may be intended for this purpose].
We are asking that we do not have Globalist propaganda forced upon us.
Let’s not be so careful that we are afraid to jump out of the water before it boils us.