Why can't it be next to nothing? How is freely discussing things with other people without someone policing that unnatural? You're making a lot of declarative suppositions that are self supportive, and you have to explain and justify them. A cursory look at least from my point of view shows that at least the two I mentioned are entirely unfounded.

Freely discussing in small human-social scale is natural. Ability to broadcast and disseminate information at instantaneous, transnational scale is as unnatural as printing press, radio and television. For individuals to do so via unfettered individual platform outside of existing power structures that's foundation to all large scale human governance systems since history even more so. Free speech + mass dissemination was conceived and rationalized as the ultimate democratic instrument, and it may very well be. But it is also an artificial instrument that was always going to disrupt. We anticipated it, an experimented with it for 15 years. The question now is whether this type of instrument is useful for governance and this type of democracy preferable. I don't think it is.

I don't think it isn't either, there could very well be a combination of factors like proper media and civil literacy that enables a society that could operate with unlimited speech. All I _feel_ is the status quo now is not working. Many feel the same way. It's not a hard why, it's a slowing growing consensus that does not feel misplaced. Information and ideas spreading faster than word of mouth and walking speed shapes society through each successive technological mediation that enables faster and broader transmission. Free speech in person with your peers is not the same as free speech online. Hence medium is the message. If the medium is the problem, than tweak it.

Optimizing for political serenity consisting of the views of which party?

Ideally none, I'm not against free speech, I'm against unfettered dissemination on default mass media platforms. I would like to see a system where no one is censored at all, but certain categories are suppressed below default public visibility. i.e. politics and things tangentially related to politics to be treated as NSFW tags. One tier above spam. Still viewable by those curious, but not elevated to current prominence. Ultimately a system like western TikTok, the default category is vastly apolitical content but you have to search for fringe partisan issues, and those issues are siloed from the greater user base.

>I find it disturbing that people have stopped supporting free speech when they stopped liking its content.

I think the issue is the current system seems to be pushing content people would usually avoid. My position is _edit: not_ pro-censorship, it's pro-moderation / curation / or suppression if we're being less charitable.

>I refuse the premise that we tech workers know best and therefore must protect the fragile little minds of everyone else.

I don't think it's the tech workers job to decide how to protect, but to implement protection based on what's good for mental health and not dark patterns for monetization. There's studies on the effects of social media out there, people are fragile. Current social media feels like it exist in pre traffic regulation and seat-belt era of safety. Not just for users, but for society.