Even private property rights have limits: a factory owner cannot pollute a water supply for personal profit. If you believe in free speech it can be argued that it should not be OK for a company like Cloudflare to pollute public discourse by injecting the biases of its leaders into it. They should not be allowed to ban certain types of speech by fiat.
> Even private property rights have limits: a factory owner cannot pollute a water supply for personal profit
That's not a limitation on property rights. A farmer polluting the water supply is an example of the farmer damaging a shared resource that does not belong to him.
> Cloudflare to pollute public discourse by injecting the biases of its leaders into it.
This has nothing to do with "public discourse". CF is a privately owned business refusing to provide a service to a privately owned website. CF is not obligated to do business with them for any reason, and frankly, it's pretty reasonable for a company to want to have nothing to do with a website where domestic terrorism is regarded as funny at best and actually put into action at worst.
I don't accept your town-square analogy, but even if it were apt, not everyone is welcome in the town square. If you're endorsing visions of racist violence and supporting those who actually act out racist violence then you'll be removed from the public square.
If you believe in the principle of free speech you might be better positioned by saying that everyone is welcome to come to the town square, but if you make poor speech then you will be refuted.
Gather in the middle of "town square" and start screaming racial slurs and threats of violence at minorities and the cops will remove you for disturbing the peace.
Again, if you subscribe to the principle of free speech, it would be wrong for the police to remove people trying to advance new or even repugnant seeming ideas.
Direct threats to violence though will likely not be protected as it would stifle free speech. But, saying that some speech could "maybe" or "potentially" lead to violence down the line is usually not an argument against allowing it.
Besides, it should ideally be a democratically elected civil government who decides these matters, not for profit private companies and its leaders.
