Does free speech include yelling down other speakers? In the physical world this rarely happens. But spamming and vandalizing an intelligent conversation with sock-puppets and intentionally disingenuous posts is trivial and universal on the web.

Consider a parallel phenomenon: I notice there is outrage among gamers when cheating happens. But ironically cheating in conversation causes less active outrage. Both of these behaviors happen easily on the web but are difficult in real life. Maybe because conversation destroying behavior is less well understood or more stealthy. Maybe because it's so unimaginable in real life, people aren't used to dealing with it. Whatever the cause it's absurd that for games the problem is solved more zealously than in conversations that have serious impact.