I don't think it's accurate to say that reddit has a free speech ethos. Maybe "free speech up until the point where it causes problems with revenue". For example, a year or so ago Reddit overhauled its rules to ban subreddits that were used to facilitate exchanging or gifting drugs (including alcohol and tobacco). However that rule has an exemption saying that advertisements for alcohol, tobacco, and narcotics are still OK. So /r/beertrade gets banned, but reddit will still happily show me ads for some winery founded by MIT grads.

Reddit will also ban subreddits for hosting content that some people may think is "bad", but definitely not illegal. Not that I miss /r/shoplifting, but the discussion itself wasn't illegal. They also banned legal things like firearm schematics and r/brassswap

Far-right communities would be alright if they could be hate-free. They usually have a hard time doing that.

> What would you suggest the alternative is?

Does there need to be one? This site seems to manage to avoid it. Quite how you get into the situation reddit did is mystifying to me.

I completely agree that anonymous free speech is not the ideal it sounds.

> This site seems to manage to avoid it.

If we are going to be reasonable a better comparison would be comparing this site to a single heavily moderated subreddit.

As an extreme you have subreddits like https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ if you look into the comments you will see a lot of "[ Removed ]" threads. https://i.imgur.com/Q7mXkPd.png

Other subreddits are purposefully not moderated as heavily. It's entirely up to whoever runs it to moderate how they see fit.

Jailbait was tacky and creepy, but in line with what you have on Instagram. It pales in comparison to the virulent racism and sexism that still pervades the site (not confined to any subreddit)