The problem is that history (AFAICT) just does not support the claim that publicly-traded corporations, especially not in the last three decades or so, actually do things that amount to significant or meaningful censorship, rather than mere caution and frankly laughable gestures like "Parental Warning- Explicit Content" (which was basically marketing, not censorship).
I'd like specific examples of real censorship, not gestures or distractions, that happened because of groups like BADD. With The Last Temptation of Christ, it's extremely hard to get any clear information on who refused to show it, and for how long (and some of the information I've seen is contradictory), and that's despite highly organised protests backed by people who stood to financially benefit from those protests happening. Clearly some significant proportion of US cinemas wouldn't show it, but one suspects had it been a movie there was massive demand to see, rather than Scorsese going quasi-arthouse, things might have been different.
This is a huge claim particularly re: larger retailers and doubly-so re: publicly-traded ones, and more than anything else in this thread, it's a [CITATION NEEDED] claim.
I see absolutely no evidence that this "invoking principles" point is really true, both within my lifetime and personal experience, and in the historical record. Particularly re: "free speech". Sometimes a company rolls out that as a half-hearted defense, but they do what they were going to do anyway - I don't see the "Oh we were going to ban it but then people said "FREE SPEECH!!!!" to us enough times and we decided not to".
There could be real examples, maybe I'm just not aware of them or I am but I'm not thinking about it correctly so am missing them, so what are actual examples of specific things which were genuinely likely to get banned (or under threat of such) being protected merely by "invoking principles"? I mean one thing that strikes me is that nothing popular even needs to get to that stage - which is point re: the dollar - Harry Potter, for example, stirred absolutely gigantic idiocy up, but was there any chance at all it would be banned or big stores wouldn't carry it, when it was making that kind of money?
My suggestion (opinion not a claim of fact, to be clear) is that this is largely an illusion, or a belief this not rooted in historical fact but personal experience and desire for something to be the case.
Why?
Because other countries enjoyed more free media without American "principles". That in fact most of what has happened is simply gradual change of values across the generations, and the fact that it's occurred outside the US. Other countries often are both ahead of and behind the US, too, without any strong "1st amendment" or similar. Some are straight-up ahead, despite lacking such a foundational principle. How is that possible if it's all about "invoking principles" and not about gradual change and cash money?
I cannot see any real, negative impact that it had when all the numbers are calculated. If anything, like "Parental Advisory - Content Warning", it might have helped D&D in the longer term. Renaming Demons/Devils/Daemons was just not a big deal in real terms, and actually ended up making TSR be more creative with them. 2E was a little more child-friendly and less "edgy" than 1E, for sure, but did that actually hurt 2E, or did it merely change it?
This point very goes to your repeated use of "chilling effect", which I've questioned before, but you haven't responded on, apparently taking it entirely for granted. The art and subject did become less edgy and less sexist and sexualized. You sometimes see how OSR games try to go very hard on the edginess of 1E (going far past what 1E was actually like, of course, c.f. LotFP and to a lesser extent DCC). But was losing that bad for D&D, or good for it? Was that because of BADD, or was it actually because D&D is a business, and likes to make money, and regardless of whether BADD exists, people's moms are going to see it, and if there's a half-naked chick strapped to an altar on some page, and a table listing prostitutes, maybe they don't need BADD to tell them they're against that?
To be clear, I don't think the "chilling effect" here is much of a problem, if it's even a problem at all, at least for the success and profitability of the game.
I think the fact that D&D has never really "gone back" on any of this supports my point. Yeah, as a token gesture they renamed Demons/Devils back, but ultimately it was meaningless PR stuff that they could as easily done in 1993 (indeed Planescape the next year immediately started with cool and likeable demonic princes and so on, the Graz'zt fans were endless), and was because it was a "selling point" (c.f. the aforementioned dollar). It's not like they brought back 1E's giant pile of juvenile edgelord stuff, or the sexist/sexualized artwork, nor went back towards "edgy" subject matter in general. Why? Because there's more money to be made chasing the mainstream market.
That's literally the reason given for removing Maus (and other works) in most cases. Whether that is a good-faith reason is obviously a separate question and I think we all know the answer to that. So is the world very different?
Dude, D&D/AD&D was one of main ways any FLGS in the '80s was going to make money. This is exactly what I'm talking about. If they pulled D&D, they go under, or at least lose huge amounts of money. You seem to want to completely ignore the obvious massive financial benefit of ignoring people like BADD, and to say this was just solely down to "invoking principles". It was a totally principled stand and the fact that D&D was a massively successful brand that was making huge amounts of money for retailers (I mean, in very relative terms - selling books/games is never that profitable at the best of times!) was absolutely nothing to do with it. Please ignore the dollar bills sticking out of my pockets!
If D&D was some obscure little RPG that was attracting the same level of protest, the same level of hostility, you think FLGSes would have been so protective of it? You think Waldenbooks would have? It's always a calculation. Showing apparent "principle" or "spine" is, outside of non-profits and very unusual businesses (never publicly traded ones), always a calculation - "is it worth it?" and "how can we do this without losing anything"?
I strongly suspect it became very quickly obvious that there was absolutely no negative impact on the bottom line for FLGSes or presumably Waldenbooks, and possibly even a positive impact on sales, because when people try to ban something, that tends to happen (c.f. Maus selling insanely more copies lately).