I think this is two arguments. The first one goes along the lines of: Defunding isn't problematic since it is not literally the only way to earn money.
For me that's equivalent to the idea that deplatforming isn't problematic, because people can still publish elsewhere or, worst case, still talk to other people.
Key to both ideas is to reject the social significance of operational scale as well as the power dimension of gradual influence.
Practically there is quite a lot of power hidden in the leeway and the bigger a company gets the more problematic their influence is for society as a whole.
The second argument, I think, is that there is nothing problematic about content demonetization because we always can trivially construct a plausible advertising interest against any unfashionable content, hence it's not primarily seen as a chilling effect but something innocent that just, by accident, ends up continuously narrowing the conversation towards the presentable and trivial.
I think this argument isn't great. Just because there's innocent intentions at play it does neither show that there are only innocent intentions at play nor that the overall venture does not, in the end, have bad consequences for society.
If our ad-ecosystem would allow advertisers to nudge a TV station towards what news they show, it would be a bad ecosystem for society, even if it's understandable that someone does not want to show their brand next to real talk.
I'll go along with you that defunding is a form of ipso facto deplatforming and therefore bad. I think it's trumped in this case by the advertisers rights to free association (and Google's desire to attract advertisers). But if (and I think this is your real objection) that defunding/deplatforming was aimed at a protected class or political identity, then that concern would rule.
That's not the case here, however. And I don't think we should be so concerned about a slippery slope that we can't allow any discrimination on the part of advertisers or Google.
By the way, I think I sense an undercurrent of "but that's just stupid" in regards to the objection to the extremely neutral use of dictionary definitions. You haven't made that argument explicitly, but for what it's worth, I'd agree with you on that personally. But that's not my call to make, or yours. (And if I'm imagining that undercurrent, then my apologies.)
For me that's equivalent to the idea that deplatforming isn't problematic, because people can still publish elsewhere or, worst case, still talk to other people.
Key to both ideas is to reject the social significance of operational scale as well as the power dimension of gradual influence.
Practically there is quite a lot of power hidden in the leeway and the bigger a company gets the more problematic their influence is for society as a whole.
The second argument, I think, is that there is nothing problematic about content demonetization because we always can trivially construct a plausible advertising interest against any unfashionable content, hence it's not primarily seen as a chilling effect but something innocent that just, by accident, ends up continuously narrowing the conversation towards the presentable and trivial.
I think this argument isn't great. Just because there's innocent intentions at play it does neither show that there are only innocent intentions at play nor that the overall venture does not, in the end, have bad consequences for society.
If our ad-ecosystem would allow advertisers to nudge a TV station towards what news they show, it would be a bad ecosystem for society, even if it's understandable that someone does not want to show their brand next to real talk.