This is completely fair, but lack of transparency makes it significantly more frustrating.
* Sometimes legal counsel provide advice that there should be no further response to the individual or organization. Often technical people don't understand this situation, but it doesn't change the merits of the legal advice. In smaller organizations a leader might take a chance in further engagement, if they think it's helpful, but it's unlikely a large organization would expose themselves to this risk.
* Breakdown in internal response processes. You'll find that many people are really uncomfortable in these situations (e.g. compliance team shut down service, but don't "own" the response.) Unless the legal team has written a response and instructions on how to deliver it, you will often see people in organizations avoid giving the response. Things get passed down as low as they can go which doesn't help because there is less experience with handling tough situations. Very often some poor person with support ends up having to give the response and they basically ignore it because they can avoid the situation. This isn't very professional of the organization, but it's a reality.
Yeah, criminals are always arrested and convicted. /s
It's a balance. With something as essential as human rights and personal freedom, people (tend to) err on the safe side. Online moderation can err on the other side, since consequences are relatively modest. If you get banned on GH, move to Gitlab or host your own, that's hardly a tragedy.
People tend to get pretty upset when someone is very clearly complying with the letter while flying in complete opposition to the spirit, and it's not always an easy fix.
For example, people who harass others just within the confines of the rules so that they can't be banned from a community solely using the rules.
This is why we need humans to judge the spirit of the rules.
2) You can be shot without any explanation whatsoever.
3) Your possessions can be taken away, and sold off without any explanation and without recourse.
Links about each of these claims:
https://abovethelaw.com/2018/07/innocent-people-who-plead-gu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsullum/2014/09/11/how-cops... (also applies to, say, cars)
The judicial system that backs it is a massive beast. If someone wants that level of assurances, they should be paying thousands of dollars for a github account. You get the level of perfection you pay for.
Grumbly investors beget grumbly board members, who then vote to oust executives to correct the profitability problem.
How are you going to alienate/lose customers by not getting rid of customers? If anything, I'd argue the opposite; a platform that refuses to ban legal content is one that I find easier to trust (for a counterexample, see Google). It's not even like github-like companies are social networks where you can claim that one user's experience of the platform is made worse by another user's posts.
Most US companies these days have no morals, and are easily influenced by these tactics due to greed and fear of being targeted themselves. Silicon Valley and the majority of the big tech companies seem to be especially vulnerable to this, probably due to their own employee demographics.
What many of these companies don't understand, possibly because they live in a relative 'bubble' surrounded by those who think similarly, is that there are a lot of us out there who not only disagree with this type of behavior, but will actively NOT use the services of any company who supports these types of tactics.
Which can be and often is subject to abuse.
IMO you correctly summarized the forces they are dealing with. These people are just trying to make money. Idealism is problematic for the people invested in the company that aren't there for idealism, but money.
Abuse can be exposed and punished, and very often is.
Meanwhile, I work in a relatively conservative industry that also happens to have one of the largest budgets of any 'company' in the world. I have seen first hand when vendors were being evaluated for multi-million (or even billion) dollar projects, both Google and Github being crossed off the list without a second thought due to some of the publicly made political statements and actions of their executives and employees.
The same kinds of "censorship" that you talk about coming from "the left" can be found in extreme parts of every ideology. Conservatives (probably of the rich and christian variety) have pushed many platforms to completely remove all even slightly adult content (the latest example being Tumblr), all sides of the political spectrum have been pressuring sites like YouTube to the point where no political discussion from any side can be monetized...
This is not an issue of political sides - it's an issue of politics (and society) in general.
As for the part about companies not knowing about the people who don't approve of this behaviour: they do. They know exactly how many of us there are: not enough. Losing even a single big investor will make a company lose more money than if everyone who disagreed with them completely stopped using their services.
You're principled minnows to that one profitable shark.
These companies understand profit, and that's where they derive their morality. I'd say it's probably more accurate that most US companies simply don't share your morals, not that they don't have morals at all.
Follow the money. This is a much more useful lens to analyze the situation than to consider the left/right political spectrum.