Because liberals started censoring people.

Conservative and liberals have flip flipped on worker rights, corporate power and speech

Conservatives have shown they have a blind spot for perceived persecution, at least from the perspective of moderates on the sidelines.

It leaves conservatives open to being conned by everything from Chinese electronics manufacturers [1] to bankrupt reality TV stars [2]. Misconstruing TOS agreement violations as censorship persecution makes it easy for billionaires to win conservative admiration without actually doing anything.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/foxconn-sharply-scales-back...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/us/politics/trump-save-am...

It's not, conservatives just like to believe that they are the only ones who value it.

Liberalism is now conservative. Note that conservative and progressive as labels apply relative to the status quo - what was in your youth is not necessarily any longer.

free speech is a liberal value. The conservatives, however, have tried to hide behind 'free speech' in order to compel speech from private entities, and have tried to pretend that they don't have a hammerlock on the mainstream media, and have tried to pretend that 'big tech' is nebulously conspiring against them whenever it enacts basic decency community standards.

My entire life private property was a right-wing value. Why are they against it all of a sudden?

The right to own private property is and has always been a liberal value.

The (absurd, imho) belief that such a right should preclude any sort of government regulation is a libertarian value.

Because Trump got banned from twitter

Because liberal used to mean "supporting liberty" (the classical definition). But it has come to mean "agreeing with a certain set of beliefs and policies", and (recently) trying to de-platform anyone who publicly disagrees. And, in our bipolar political spectrum, those who disagree with the "liberals" are the "conservatives", who are therefore the ones the "liberals" are trying to de-platform.

So the "conservatives" believe very strongly in free speech (at the moment) because it's their speech that is currently getting crimped. And, seeing the trends, they think it's likely to get worse in the future. (As, say, anything disagreeing with the current "liberal" position gets labeled "racist" or "transphobic" or something, designed to make it virtuous to censor.)

The classic definition was basically the freedom to criticize your government without repercussions.

Conservatives now define it as the permission to spread deliberate misinformation and overt racism and bigotry without consequences from either the government OR private entities.

> spread deliberate misinformation and overt racism and bigotry

Which, in a world where anything you don't like or agree with must be one of those things, is kind of unavodiable.