We can mourn the loss of an understanding environment in which to speak impulsively, but there's a segment of people who react to this change by embracing their offensiveness and raging against the "SJWs", which is equally bad.

The reality is that one's online words impact a massively larger segment of people than they used to, and typically without context. This has bred constant reactionism and irritation in our society, which is a bad thing. I think the solution is to scale your "carefulness" to the scope of your media channel. Treat Twitter posts like you're speaking on live TV in front of millions. Because you effectively are. HackerNews tends to be a little more homogenous so you can get away with a little more. Private group chats with friends are all the way on the other end of the spectrum and allow you to say whatever you want. Simply don't expect the entire internet to be empathetic and give you the benefit of the doubt. Nuance doesn't scale that far.

All that said, I think Linus' words were referring to his fame and the scale of the Linux project, not the internet in general. His project has gone from a small, tight-knit group to one of the largest software projects in the world. So yeah, some adjustment in decorum is necessary.