Not the OP, but no, not "exclusively". But sites that espouse that principle end up attracting them in droves because they're shunned everywhere else.

And then people who believe in free speech but don't intend to use it to be assholes don't feel comfortable there, further making those sites hives of ... well, whatever bad adjective you want to assign.

> hives of

scum and villainy.

The argument is that free speech absolutism attracts totalitarianism that wants free speech for itself specifically, and will hide behind the demand for free speech at the expense of many other things, include the speech of those it disagrees with.

And we should not put up with that kind of dishonesty.

I don't agree that free speech absolutism attracts totalitarians exclusively. But I do agree it will attract those that have a hard time finding a place elsewhere. Anyone who can be tolerated on twitter, which isn't a high bar, wouldn't go elsewhere unless ideologically motivated to do so (mind this doesn't necessitate horrible views, some people want to oppose censorship not because they themselves are censored). People who hold objectionable views won't change their minds when censored, and they won't change their minds because they're being told they are wrong or somehow deficient. But we have to do something to lead people to have better beliefs, there has to be a way to redeem the objectionable people of the world. If one is to choose to not help these people, in my cynical opinion the only other option is too cynical to post.

Here's the thing, though: Societies always have norms, and norms are enforced by making norm-breaking views shunned. Letting people speak their objectionable views with no repercussions normalises those views, and makes them more acceptable.

Objectionable views HAVE to be opposed, or they will fester and grow. Polite disagreement doesn't help, because the person will just go on to post them again, and again, and again. The fact that I politely disagreed with one of them will not help with the other 99 times.

There needs to be visible consequences for breaking norms, or the norms themselves will break.

There are enough repercussions for deviating from the norm in modern western societies, especially offline. Again, toxic people congregating to indulge in their __wrong__ beliefs wouldn't be nearly as bad online if they weren't ostracized offline.

I agree, there must be a way to have the better beliefs to survive and the lesser beliefs die, but ostracizing people who hold the lesser ones doesn't rid them of the beliefs.

And why the platforms silo people? Because people want it: "the implication of the Internet is that ideas are in abundance, and people will seek out what they already agree with, as opposed to accepting what is delivered to them." https://stratechery.com/2020/the-idea-adoption-curve/

Free Speech is not a supply problem it is a demand problem.

They’re not outnumbered though. They’re backed up by sock puppet accounts, nation state funded propaganda / troll organisations out to cause trouble and well funded PR companies pushing populist agendas.

It’s not a question of free speech vs censorship, it’s which type censorship do you prefer? The corporate kind or the shitposting bullying trolling kind?

What makes you think that it's just the baddies that employ troll farms?

Because if you employ bot farms and troll hordes, you crossed the line. You left free speech (your voice should not be censored and you should be able to say your mind) in favor of amplification and agenda pushing.

At least in my personal view.

Take this forum here for example: There is a community driven mechanism that enforces some rules. Your comment can end up dead. One can decide to view dead comments, but given enough negative feedback you can be silenced here.

The community enforces values. These might change over time, but they are there, because the community does value collective freedom (freedom from trolls and such things) in a form that allows individual freedom of speech to be restricted.

On a deeper level: There are always different forms of freedom at play and valuing one above the other restricts the other necessarily.

Freedom of speech without restriction enables said actors and bot farms together with content personalisation to hinder the freedom of individuals. Because they aren't allowed to see content that amplified voices drown out or that is being hidden from their view by the algorithms.

So actually Google, Facebook and the likes are already restricting the freedom of people. And doing so under the thin guise of "fighting for freedom of speech".

IMHO trolling is bad by definition.

But it doesn’t really matter whether you consider it the goodies or baddies, it’s still a form of shutting down speech.

Are you implying that the deplorable people on twitter are not outnumbered by the non-deplorable people because of bot farms?

There needs to be nuance around "outnumbered".

The deplorables are made more visible and made to appear more popular by bot-assisted upvoting/retweeting/sharing efforts.

Non-deplorables are silenced or made to self-censor by mass-downvotes/death threats in DMs/doxxing. And even the ones who just view and don't write get disheartened and leave if their curated frontpage is a cesspool of falsehoods and outrage bait. So yes, bot farms and their manual brethren (wumao dang, IRA, alt-right discords) over time help to purge dissenting voices.