The law is different in the UK to the US
We do not have a right to free speech in the same way.
The 1st amendment prevents censorship by government but not private censorship. The US has a problem with Trump as he more than even most Republicans believes in private rather than public ownership of everything.
We do have stricter censorship laws in the first place. We have some rights to free speech under the Human Rights Act. But there are lots of exception to this which generally relate to security and abuse of others.
However since MN is a private platform it can set its own rights and code of conduct which you have to adhere to under its terms of service. These must fall inside the law, but can also include additional censorship as MNHQ see fit.
At present, it's owners support the general principle of freedom of speech as it is written into UK with relatively few additional conditions. And we are fortunate in this respect.
However in the future this could change. Especially if there is a change of ownership which doesn't share the same value of freedom of speech being a core principle of free debate on the site.
MN could also be at the mercy of the law changing as the government seek to restrict stuff said on foreign based platforms which are within the law where they are based but against British law.
Any censorship on the Internet is something we should be concerned about, even if in principle we think its a good idea.
The problem is you are giving enormous power to a group - which might not have much transparency or accountability - which might have its own particular prejudices which disadvantage certain groups. Women in particular are possibly at risk of this as they have less power in decision making over the formation and implemention of censorship for a variety of reasons and because of the nature of the technology and who is employed in the industry (see twitter being dominanted by woke tech dudes)
There is a growing movement in the UK and amongst politicians to support Internet censorship. Tbh, I think there's a lot of ignorance about how you achieve this and a lack of awareness if how people get around it, which means censorship could be somewhat counter productive in its ambition, instead pushing those who have nefarious content underground and harder to prosecute for breaking the law in other areas by being harder to trace whilst silencing voices which help to hold power to account, leading to more abuses of power.
That's why MN is such a good platform atm, because it recognises the importance of allowing women to talk on (largely) their own terms about issues which feature power imbalances in just about every walk if life you can think of.
But its incredibly fragile, and I worry that MN will fall foul of changes to the law as they have less resources to police their own sit in comparison to the social media giants. Any censorship laws are liable to be expensive for platform operators. Or put women at risk. I know one of the suggestions is about having to make people use their real name on social media. This would produce 'haves' and 'have nots' for social media and its power to connect and communicate as people would potentially be more at risk of harassment or doxxing. This puts women at a particular disadvantage - and given the idea is supposed to be about empowering women and stopping the disportionate amount of abuse they get online. It would simply silence a lot of women instead and disenfranchise them from public debate via another means. It then distorts society and power even further.
MN is quite a good foil to balance some of these issues, but that's also why its a target and a magnet for dickheads and hostile opinions.
There's too much of an idealisation that there is a magic button you can press that will solve online abuse. Or you can use a magic algorithm to remove certain things - thus only works to a degree and positive things can be mistakenly removed too.
Twitter and Facebook have got into some criticism in how they remove inappropriate content by human means as it can't be done by algorithms. It has been reported that they've out sourced it to third world countries and people have a job to see all manner of horrific things without training or access to councilling and there's little over sight over safeguarding who is in these jobs. It's low paid and regarded as low skill and long hours There's reports of workers with trauma from the job. And concerns that if you liked things like viewing child porn, it might well be your dream job...
Censorship as a means to solve the problem of online abuse is tackling the problem from the wrong angle for a lot of reasons.
There's a massive debate here and one which has many feminist issues and concerns.
Sorry I got a little carried away with this post!