The solution is censorship resistant distributed platforms that are as feature rich and easy to use and enable you to monetize content.
Agree with you 100%.
However, I slightly disagree with you when you say that the social media giants are private businesses that have every right to "choose what appears on their platforms". They have all received funding from the government and are considered public fora; and as such have no right to do so at will. Moreover, they are clearly doing these purges for political reasons, as you don't see them censor many other videos and contents that promote violence such as the countless ones of terrorists groups, Antifa included along with many others of Satanic and Pedophilic nature. Wouldn't you say?
Furthermore, these social media giants are breaking many anti-trust laws. Sadly, they are given a "free-pass" and are not prosecuted for these crimes, as they are in bed with the politicians.
The real sad part though - and the one which I believe is the underlying ROOT CAUSE of this entire fiasco is the ignorance of the masses with regards to their First Amendment rights. Please have a look at my post on this to see what I mean. Absolutely nobody is talking about this and in my opinion this is the most important aspect. Sad. Very sad.
Entities like facebook can either be private or public (government owned). You can't have it both ways. Government funded is not the same as government (public) owned. Personally, I'm not interested in a socialist or communist state where the government has this kind of ownership power. The government, while acting as venture capitalists (which I agree is not something they should be doing in the first place) does not entail them to special powers over other venture capitalists. Taxpayers get a return on their investment (assuming the investments were wise), that's it.
You have every right to free speech. Stopping you from using youtube does not stop you from creating and publishing videos that everyone can see quite easily. Getting the audience is your responsibility, not facebook's or youtube's.
I asked this before elsewhere in this threat, but if the government bailed out or invested in a publishing company, does that give you the automatic right to publish your book with that company or article in their newspaper? Seems pretty unreasonable to me.
Don't take this to mean I agree with what these companies are doing. I do not and I believe everybody who feels the same should be looking for alternative platforms. These days, I primarily use Steemit and a combination of Daily Motion and DTube for video. For social networking, in addition to Steemit, I recommend Diaspora but there are other alternatives as well.
Another take/view on this issue is that the minute these organization begin to make editorial decisions (i.e., decided what gets "published" or appears and what doesn't) then they should be considered publishers (like CNN, The New York Times, Newsweek, etc.) and thus can be exposed to libel, lawsuits for defamation.
Again, similar to what we've both said before, they are trying to have it both ways. Problem is, the authorities don't force the issue either way because they are using them to their advantage and for their own nefarious reasons of information dissemination (i.e., propaganda, controlling narratives for war, politics/elections, etc.), and ultimately control of the people.
I think when you are publishing on a site like youtube, it is more like being an independent contractor than an employee so ultimately you are still responsible for any libel. Having said that, youtube and other such sites CAN be held responsible for defamation if they do not react to such complaints in a timely manner. Such organizations have ALWAYS made editorial decisions just not necessarily for political reasons. At the end of the day, it is the advertisers that have the most influence because that is how the money is made and that was largely the case even before the internet.
Despite whatever youtube is doing, I think the situation today is far better than it used to be. It wasn't so long ago that three major news network along with a handful of major newspapers were the source of the vast majority of all news. Now the options are virtually unlimited.