Honest question, and not snark: We have 4chan and 8chan. Those are absolute free speech. Don't we already know how "absolute free speech" works out on digital platforms? Why do we need another one?

Or am I missing something major here?

Those are free speech but also anonymous. In real free speech you still have to put your name to what you're saying. If you suddenly stuck everyone's real name on every single comment they wrote then it'd suddenly become a lot more civilized.

Conversely, because there are no identities, there's no way to follow specific people you agree with.

Ok, but Twitter has no such real name policy, correct? It is just a convention used by public and semi-public figures isn't it?

I believe it's required if you want the white checkmark.

I guess the problem with those platforms is that most privately censored speech is still the actual hate speech stuff like Nazism/racism/homophobia/etc, so those platforms have taken on all of those aspects because those people have nowhere else to go.

But Twitter is not already a cesspool of those things, and I guess the feeling is that loosening up on the reigns a little bit won't suddenly cause Twitter to turn into a neo-nazi dominated platform. You'll just have things like not banning Donald Trump or not squashing factually correct NYPost articles – which of course are things that you can still debate the merits of but are different from Twitter becoming 4chan.