I think your timeline is a little too long, by about 3 years.  

if only people could stop being raging dicks....  >.>  <.<

Human nature ... there will always be some people who are raging dicks.

Actually, I think the biggest issue is the duality of thought.   "Good vs Evil"  Us vs them...

The US spent soooo much time and energy "winning" the cold war that once it was over the only enemy left was our neighbors....

German chancellor Merkel expressed her concerns about Twitter's permanent ban of (still) US president Trump. She argued that  these kind of decisions involve the freedom of speech and, thus, should not be handled by private companies.

It wil not happen. Cause you got second amendment.

By the way. Twitter stock plummeted.

Poland (eastern EU nation for those who dont know) is doing more than "expressing concerns": They are making a new anti-censorship law. See:

Justice Minister announces online freedom of speech bill

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/khxb0g/poland_threatens_hefty_fines_for_social_media/

(and lots other sources, just use search engine)

Ill make this point, Congress is government, when Sitting members of congress who are in a position of power and able to make law in the government and are openly calling for people to be silenced this is government silencing people and violating the 1A.   

There was a court ruling that applied to government officials in or around 2017 that stated a government official can not block people in a public forum such as Twitter etc.  Because it allowed people to have an avenue to express their opinions.

Amazon broke several laws by silencing one of their competitors.  Amazon owns another social media app, I believe snapchat. 

Government is serviced by Google in our schools.  Schools are regulated by our Congress.  I hope everyone can see the problems here with any forms of censorship.

People that went to protests have lost their Jobs.  This is a major problem.

2021 and 2022 make sense. 2023 and 2024 are off the rails. I don't see those things happening. 2024  -talks about AI but I've seen videos of Karens in grocery stores getting kicked out because they wouldn't wear a mask. That's good.

So if I go around work saying anti gay and racist things and also wear t-shirts with concentration camp references and tell people I want to hang the speaker of the house I can expect to be fired. As far as free speech goes I can say all those things but my company wouldn't tolerate it and we should not tolerate any of that type of thing especially from the holder of the highest office in the land.

Twitter should have banned him long ago. It's a private company they can ban whoever they want.

Frogboy, you of all people should realize that.  

You have the meaning of "Karen" 100% wrong. The Karen is the one yelling at the person without a mask on. Typical Orwellian tactic though, trying to change the meaning of a word.

Google is going to lose a few antitrust lawsuits especially in the EU over this.   They should have just turned over the data they had to the FBI and let them handle this.

that said...  If I worked for a publicly traded company and I was tagged online as having done something that looked negatively on my employer you can bet your butt I'd be unemployed.

Companies don't just fire you for no reason...  if you have actively harmed their brand however that is a valid reason and any company would do the same. 

Private companies can make dress code to address those tees.  As far as firing someone for attending a protest, I disagree with or even give their opinion online.  People should be able to do things on their own time as long as they are not posting bad things about the company they work for. This is the problem with the damn internet, it is too much entangled into our personal and work life.  Companies should not have this much control over us.

We are walking a thin line for freedoms and large corps should not be telling us what we can or can't do.

as far as taking any leader offline because they say things people don't like.  Hitler did that with speech.  He used propaganda to win over the masses kind of like what we see with MSM now. 

Actually this wonderfully 'quaint' term 'Karen' refers to BOTH.  It has nothing to do with wearing a mask or not...but actually about the self-absorbed who think their [perception of] rights surpass those of others.

It predates Corona [and mask wearing]...

Incitement to riot has always been a 'crime'.  Has nothing to do with social media other than that is yet another avenue to voice it.

The social media sites are private and are thus not required to abide by the rules of 'free speech', no matter how people wish to interpret the term.

Stardock's sites/forums are also privately owned and set their own rules of conduct.  Rightly, they prohibit quite a bit of what people claim they are entitled to do under the heading of 'free speech'.  You cannot [here] discriminate by politcs, race, creed or sexual preference.  You cannot [here] bully, insult or otherwise negatively impact on a fellow site member without censure.

'freedom of speech' is often claimed to empower people to do all of that.

To hold and/or voice an opinion contrary to that of the State is not a free ticket to tell people to assault others, no matter who you think you are.

I think the main problem, is when the rules are not being applied equally and are often being stretched in order to target people who don't share twitter/facebook etc political alignment.

It's fine, if they say "These are our rules, please follow them." but if they then go and ignore people who align politically calling for violence and riots, but then banhammer any one else whos words could be taken out of context into potentially breaching the policy, then it causes a big problem.