I mean, it's a useless question of pedantry. It rarely changes the outcome.
I cannot say that I am a free speech absolutist, there are many people that write software that are, and in addition believe that software is speech. Which particular rules of this framework do you want to apply? I think greedy people that value money above all else are terrible, but they exist and create software regardless of your abohorance of doing so.
That would be assuming that the people who built the technology bringing deepfakes are such people, which I would question.
Maybe they just don't think about the consequences of their work. Maybe there is something to teach to engineers about ethics. I'm saying that because I feel like personally, I could have use some ethics class. Maybe it would have given me some keys when thinking about all that.
Of course, the question of whether a particular technology is good or evil requires a moral framework, that's a necessity from the "good or evil" part.
Now those who say "technology is neutral" imply - if I understand correctly - that technology is out of this discussion. They think that the use of technology can be good or bad, but the technology itself is neither.
And that is what I question: should we consider that technology is completely out of the moral debate, or not? Obviously if we conclude that it is part of the moral debate, then it depends on the moral framework. In this case, the technology behind deepfakes was developed by people that I am convinced don't approve of the use in the original article.
So it seems legit to me to ask whether those people questioned the technology they were developing, within their moral framework, before doing it and releasing it to the world.
Am I missing something?