I grew up in the early 2000s. I find it difficult to understand as well, but I think what happened is that emotional human contact was overrun by corporate/nation-state bots. Bots cannot be convinced that their positions are wrong; they exist solely to spread discontent and fear. This is far different than the early Internet where you could safely assume everyone you were talking to is a real person. They may be a dangerous person, but a person nonetheless. You could equally assume that their day job does not consist of demoralizing or confusing people, and their positions on the issues were a result of genuine thought and strategy rather than a built in set of beliefs meant to serve some mystery person or group's end game.

Basically, free speech only works if we have reason to believe the people holding onto the "bad" ideas in the idea marketplace listen. It stops being a solution when there are no consequences to being wrong, when your reputation doesn't matter, and when you can be as immoral or insidious as you want without a care in the world. This is the result of automation invading human spaces.