But digital services do actively censor posts, even if your post is perfectly legal. Postal services do not destroy letters with pictures of nipples in it, just try to post an image of a female breast on Facebook. If they can censor nipples, they can actively filter hate speech or abusive posts just fine. Claimining it's too difficult to monitor posts pro–actively was probably true in 2005, but not anymore. Right now, platforms like Facebook are eating cake and having it too.
they can actively filter hate speech or abusive posts just fine
And how, pray tell, do you identify "hate speech"? Who's the judge? You're going to get a different answer in Iran than you do in Switzerland. Not to mention the obvious, that the answer to to speech you don't like, is more speech, not censorship.
Well, parent's argument is that Facebook is already deciding which speech they don't like, so they're already doing some kind of identification. The question then becomes, can government compel them to change that definition to meet laws and regulations that the govt. wants to enforce?
Companies already cater to national laws, e.g. Twitter censoring accounts in Turkey on the behest of their government.
In a technological world this just results in megaphone / spam wars, ultimately destroying the value of communication channels. Almost everyone finds a moderated platform more useful than an unmoderated one.
