Mostly, but the few restrictions they do have led to even absolutist-er spinoffs like 8chan being founded.

depends on the board you're browsing, if you're discussing gardening you won't have issues with the far-right

Every website that allows content uploaded by users have moderators, you can be absolutist as you want but you can't allow CP for example, you also need to handle DMCA (unless you live in a country that couldn't care less).

There are no true free speech absolutist sites on the open internet. To run a site under free speech absolutist principles would require allowing and refusing to moderate illegal content.

People like to confuse "free speech absolutism" for "tolerating right-wing speech" because the free speech absolutist narrative has been pushed by right-wing accelerationists, but every site has its limits, even 4chan.

And you don't even need to go that far. Off-topic posts could result in a swift 3-day ban. There were even words and phrases that could get you autobanned the second you hit submit.

“Illegal” where? There's a lot of different illegal stuff in a lot of different countries.

The elephant in the room is that USA appointed itself as a policeman for the whole network. Demands of its state and business entities are somehow tied to the fact that there is no true free speech on the open internet.

Illegal wherever, it doesn't matter. Very few admins are going to be willing to take a bullet for you even if they enjoy your spicy memes.

Well, but who shoots that bullet? It doesn't appear out of thin air. We shouldn't consider that it all happened “by itself”, it has formed quite recently, and the memory is fresh. In addition to that, we can see that quite specific topics attract attention of that internet cop, and he's pretty ignorant about the rest. It seems that the choice is somehow guided by the spectacle presented to public inside the US, and changes with political fashions.

No, it's mostly a cancer survivors support group. Every third post was about cancer, what is causing it, and frank expressions of helplessness in the face of it.

About half the posts were pornography, racist rants, or memes making fun of someone, often for being mentally handicapped.

Five percent was accusing the moderators of sleeping on the job.

Edit: I love that people are down-voting this, it really shows how much people like to have an opinion even while they can't recognize even the most obvious things that requires any information about the subject.

My understanding is the cancer was mostly killing bees.

No the bees were never good.

4chan has global rules and board-specific rules.

Racism, hate speech in general, as well as anything illegal, will quickly result in deletion and IP ban.

The site will also, as it's obvious, cooperate with authorities, when it comes to crimes.

4chan is far from being a free-speech absolutist site.

But it has much less of a barrier to post things. You do not need an email or a phone number you can just post. And an IP ban will only be effective to prevent the average user. Still though things get removed and moderated and I am okay with that. Having seen some of the telegram groups and the misinformation they spread was a crazy eye opener during covid times.