I don't know anything about compelling companies but speech by itself cannot harm anybody.
Stuff that Hitler said are benign within the context of knowing what happened in WW2, his words are merely a historic relic and no one start putting Jews in camps just by reading his words. His words are not a spell that makes people do things when you read them. Back then his words caused harm because they were said within the context of 1930s-1940s Europe.
The context doesn't disappear when you block speech. Let the speech exists and enable fair pushback for the opponents of the said speech is the way to handle it, IMHO.
For example, instead of pretending that racists don't exists by deleting their arguments and accounts, let them say the things they have to say and enable the opponents of it have the same reach.
The "by itself" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Sure, if you post someone's home address with an allegation that they're a paedophile, the instruction to attack them doesn't harm them, it's people following the instruction. And the bombardment of words sent to harassment victims isn't the sole factor in the emotional state of harassment victims, and it's the virus that kills not the antivax sentiment etc etc.
But they harm people rather more directly than Twitter having the freedom to delete those words if its management feels that would be the responsible thing to do does...
These things happen only in consequence free environments(deleting a comment or blocking an account is not a the kind of consequence I'm talking about).
Stuff that Hitler said are benign within the context of knowing what happened in WW2, his words are merely a historic relic and no one start putting Jews in camps just by reading his words. His words are not a spell that makes people do things when you read them. Back then his words caused harm because they were said within the context of 1930s-1940s Europe.
The context doesn't disappear when you block speech. Let the speech exists and enable fair pushback for the opponents of the said speech is the way to handle it, IMHO.
For example, instead of pretending that racists don't exists by deleting their arguments and accounts, let them say the things they have to say and enable the opponents of it have the same reach.