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That would be a fair argument, were it not for the fact that every candidate is being excluded from algorithmic recommendations.

Were it just one or two candidates, then it would indeed be a form of "soft censorship". That doesn't seem to be the case here.

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What's wrong with saying that it's censoring every candidate?

Censorship targets subversion. Censors seek to prevent the spread of antiestablishment information and ideas. So one can hardly claim that a universal ban on algorithmic recommendation for all candidates is censorship.

Censorship doesn't have to "target subversion" or "prevent the spread of antiestablishment information" to be censorship.

Even if we use an all-encompassing definition of censorship, this still doesn't quite qualify. It's just preventing the recommendation algorithms from working on the politician accounts. The accounts themselves were not censored.