That is exactly free speech. A right to express an unsavoury view without the system punishing you.

Never gave you a right not to be ignored by your neighbours, or not banned from the bar, or not having others nudge their friends to make sure they notice and avoid, etc. Free speech almost always came with consequences until the internet age.

Free speech to be really free must be free of consequences. This also requires a rational, mature audience. The fear of consequences will not allow free speech to exist.

Preaching Bible can offend my atheist neighbor. My neighbor's blasphemous speech can offend my religious sentiments. There can be no end to this. In effect, no one will be free to speak their mind.

Reminds me of a New York comedian I heard who said something like, "I discovered that in the South, guys don't give any warning before they punch you."

It is like that where I grew up in the Midwest, too. Knowing that there will likely be immediate physical consequences for inflammatory speech is a great way to limit that kind of behavior. Unless, of course, it's Saturday night and you're mildly drunk and looking for a fight.

>"I discovered that in the South, guys don't give any warning before they punch you."

That's not free speech. That's silencing what you don't like with violence.

Actually, the guy got punched for insulting someone. He went on to talk about how in New York there would have likely been some warning first. So yeah, insults and name-calling comes with immediate consequences in real life. I think that's acceptable.

I'm not advocating public violence to limit speech or "de-platform" people. We have too much of that already. Rather, the point was to contrast the kinds of things people will say online that they would probably not say in person.

> Knowing that there will likely be immediate physical consequences for inflammatory speech is a great way to limit that kind of behavior.

it's also a great way to limit unpopular political speech and marginalized people taking up public space. "gay bashing", for example, is still a thing that happens to some of my friends.

unless we can count on people to only administer beatings to the right folks, i don't really see how you can have it both ways.

>it's also a great way to limit unpopular political speech and marginalized people taking up public space.

It's also a great way to defend unpopular political speech and marginalized people. The civil rights and gay rights movements used the same means of inflicting social and physical consequences against the status quo that its defenders used to defend it.

Speech doesn't exist in a vacuum completely separate from the universe of physical consequence, it never has.

No, the civil rights movement almost always was at the mercy of those willing to commit violence and kick people out of businesses. Your ideas about how people can kick you out of businesses and punch you if they don't like what you're saying benefit only those with power.

>Your ideas about how people can kick you out of businesses and punch you if they don't like what you're saying benefit only those with power.

They're not my ideas, and they don't benefit only those in power. If that were true, no protest, union or revolutionary movement of any kind would ever have been successful. The paradox of tolerance[0] is a real thing.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

???

I'm not trying to get in the middle of your guys' argument, but I have a serious question.

Why does a troll being anonymous or public, make his speech any more, or less, free? (Assuming that soldiers or police, or Saudi Intelligence Agents, aren't coming to drag said troll away.)

> That's not free speech

That is, in fact, the definition of free speech.