I'm not entirely sure that certain large sites have thought through the legal implications of this kind of behavior, and no I'm not talking about "censorship!" or other free speech laws that are applicable to government rather than private entities.
Back during the late 90s all of us working on public websites knew that allowing user-contributed content was a great way to build both community and to increase the sheer amount of content, which increased advertising revenues. But there's a catch to user-contributed content... in order to avoid legal responsibility as a site owner for the user content posted on the site you can't moderate that content directly. The reason for this is the "common carrier" rule.
Common carrier essentially states that as a communications platform you are not liable for the legal implications of the communications that occur on your platform as long as you do not choose to engage in editing or moderating that content. AT&T, for example, was not legally liable for a conversation that occurred on their telephone network even if the conversation involved the commission of a crime (we're plotting a terror attack, a bank robbery, etc.) The reason they were not liable was because they did not monitor the communications on their network and did not cut off a phone call if it sounded like you were planning something illegal, evil, whatever.
The minute you, as the carrier, begin actively moderating the content (as opposed to setting up common universal rules such as site karma or user driven moderation), you are responsible for ALL of that content. You managed to remove 99.99% of all illegal communication? Too bad, you're still on the hook for that 0.01% that you missed.
This does not mean that content may never be removed by the company, it's just that they must do it under the order of a court or applicable government entity... in the same way that AT&T could not tap your phones absent a court order.
Many sites opted not to have user-contributed content due to the potential concerns regarding advertisers or their own brand reputation. Others did allow such content and later removed things such as comments and the like due to the conflict between violating common carrier and the problems that arose with advertisers and/or their brand (see Yahoo Finance comments circa 2002 or so).
Back during the late 90s all of us working on public websites knew that allowing user-contributed content was a great way to build both community and to increase the sheer amount of content, which increased advertising revenues. But there's a catch to user-contributed content... in order to avoid legal responsibility as a site owner for the user content posted on the site you can't moderate that content directly. The reason for this is the "common carrier" rule.
Common carrier essentially states that as a communications platform you are not liable for the legal implications of the communications that occur on your platform as long as you do not choose to engage in editing or moderating that content. AT&T, for example, was not legally liable for a conversation that occurred on their telephone network even if the conversation involved the commission of a crime (we're plotting a terror attack, a bank robbery, etc.) The reason they were not liable was because they did not monitor the communications on their network and did not cut off a phone call if it sounded like you were planning something illegal, evil, whatever.
The minute you, as the carrier, begin actively moderating the content (as opposed to setting up common universal rules such as site karma or user driven moderation), you are responsible for ALL of that content. You managed to remove 99.99% of all illegal communication? Too bad, you're still on the hook for that 0.01% that you missed.
This does not mean that content may never be removed by the company, it's just that they must do it under the order of a court or applicable government entity... in the same way that AT&T could not tap your phones absent a court order.
Many sites opted not to have user-contributed content due to the potential concerns regarding advertisers or their own brand reputation. Others did allow such content and later removed things such as comments and the like due to the conflict between violating common carrier and the problems that arose with advertisers and/or their brand (see Yahoo Finance comments circa 2002 or so).