I'm having this convo in two sub-threads here so excuse the cut and paste:

You can't have free speech without space for everyone to speak. And to create space for everyone to speak you need rules and boundaries otherwise biggest-bully-troll wins and almost everyone else is denied their speech. All the evidence - seeing how things play out in practice every single time - tells us that.

Fully open debate is a fantasy, won't ever work. Even pple who claim to be for total free speech recognise that implicitly even though they pretend otherwise (for whatever reason).

Example: you set up a sub to discuss woodworking, or organise a talk on "new woodworking techniques". By its very nature that's already constrained and boundaried, and you (or FS absolutists) probably wouldn't advocate for others to go into that space en-masse and start screaming about some entirely different topic, or posting death threats, or libel or conspiracies. You'd say let everyone who is interested in woodworking come and share their ideas, some might be good ideas, some might not - have a discussion, counter points - but you'd recognise that if a screaming mob comes in to smash the place up then saying you can't evict them bcs "censorship" makes a nonsense of how discussion, learning, and testing of ideas functions.

So, why is it that for some spaces, some topics, those boundaries are reframed as "censorship" ? Terms of debate is a thing, as is freedom of assembly, and again, it's interesting who is and isn't allowed to assemble and set their own boundaries and terms.