Aren't these glamorous tech companies supposed to be employing from the pool of the highest echelons of intellectualism? How is it that they have such exceedingly large valuations but they can't manage to deploy a rationale by which to manage their user-based content?
That argument proves too much, I think. It seems analogous to the question of "Why would anyone ever want higher taxes? If they think the optimal tax rate is higher, they can just pay more taxes."
If one company takes a more principled approach to moderation, and that more principled approach is harmful to revenue, that company will be outcompeted by companies with whatever moderation policies optimize for engagement / revenue / growth. As a result, in the absence of legislation, you get adverse selection i.e. the dominant platforms will be the ones that optimize for engagement/revenue/growth, rather than the ones with good moderation policies.
If you instead have legislation for what "good moderation" looks like, it applies equally to all companies and mitigates the adverse selection problem.
Of course, it is still entirely possible for bad legislation to introduce worse problems than the adverse selection problem. It depends on the object level of what exactly the legislation is, rather than being a blanket "legislation bad" or "legislation good" sort of thing.
It is virtually impossible to not offend anyone, so they choose from the basket of all potential customers or products which they believe will be most profitable. If the ~~nazis~~ alt-right were making them more money than centrists and leftists, they wouldn't have banned them by citing freedom of speech and expression. However, their analysts probably deemed that losing the rest of the user base through the #cancel culture isn't worth it.
I'm speaking less about the leaders, but more of the mass. Silicon Valley has practically been deified as the brain capitol of the US, if not the world, but they're unable to meaningfully address the question? I think not, they're not addressing it, but with a sleight of hand pretending action to subdue their consumer base with a sense of security and imply a democratic process. An act of vanity, which I hope will be seen through.
