I used to be a member of voat. It had much of the same ideals as this place, but in a way more relaxed way. It was supposed to be a way for those who got tired of plebbit to make our own plebbit. While the admins did make a valiant effort towards safeguarding the place and seeking an angel investor to keep it running; it ultimately collapsed upon its own weight. Initially, it did attract a lot of the free speechers, but it also attracted a lot of the refuse-tier users from plebbitt. People who's only use for free speech was to make political statements and to show why the other "team" was wrong. Never to waiver from their dogma. People who falsely believed they were infallible and refused to open their ears. A pseudo-superiority.
The problem with the place was that those who came seeking free speech were tailed by those who seek to abuse it. Those on the left who couldn't defend their viewpoints without heavy handed moderation retreated to plebbit where the mods and echo chamber could safely protect and support their viewpoints as well as outnumber any right wingers. Discussion without dissent is like pizza without the sauce. Pointless. Nowadays you can see the dumpster of plebbit replete with their kin. Full of people who want free this and free that. Damn the expense. Someone else will pay for it. Some even go as far as calling certain things "rights." Right to internet. Right to housing. Right to healthcare. The only rights you have are those given to you by a creator entity or imbued in you at birth, not the state, not a government. Things that take heavy labor from others will never be rights no matter how hard they screech for them to be so.
Outnumbered, those who were left aligned simply left voat and either returned to plebbit or dissipated elsewhere. Okay, so far its just a right wing >reddit
, but wait it gets worse. This led to a centralization and competition from those on the right wing to engage in a shouting competition on who could shout their views the loudest. This alienated even the staunchest supporters of free speech and the hardiest of the left aligned. This coupled with incessant image based propaganda from racist alt-right nationalists alienated many of the free speechers and drove away many supporters of the site. In addition it also brought them attention from entities with access to CSAM. The site was booted from several hosts repeatedly over unknown entities that continued to upload CSAM to the site. I still don't know why the government hasn't gone after the uploaders and can only speculate why. Turns out very few people were actually interested in funding the place. Most just wanted a place to screech political viewpoints. I recall several times where the site was nearly close to going under, but always far from reaching their donation goals. It was saved repeatedly by various secret angel investors. Those who wanted the site down turned their attention to the angel investors and ultimately they all buckled under pressure.
Which brings us to the obvious problem. We can support free speech entirely, and let racism and identity politics destroy us from within. Or we have limits and abandon fully free speech. Either way we lose. There are far too many people who take free speech as a license to behave like an idiot on the internet. Some even going as far as confusing the first amendment and falsely tricking themselves into believing it applies anywhere. I used to be a forum mod for a mid level game publisher. I wont name who because NDA. But every so often I'd have to mute or ban some idiot who presumably passed civics in high school, yet failed to actually learn anything of value. (Thanks bush. Should've left those turds behind).
Even more problematic is free speech off the net. In the United States, the first amendment protects free speech with some caveats for safety. People will abuse free speech falsely believing it is a license to spew hot takes. Instead it should be thought of as a license to open your ears. Not your trap. Unfortunately in the real world the situation is more dire than initially appears. Powerful interest groups have a vested interest in folding over free speech with exemptions for ill defined and loosely organized groups. Ultimately the freedom becomes riddled with the bullet holes of exemptions casting a chill over free speech as thought policing takes over. Whoever defines the protected groups has all the power. I think we can all agree that hate speech should be discouraged, but to what extent and to what punishment is a highly complex and dangerous problem.
The crux of the problem is who gets to define what hate speech is. Here we are lucky that the administration is competent and qualified, but offline that is rarely the case. Power attracts the most vile, worthless, useless, thirsty, liars, degenerate, villains you could ever hope to amass under one rotten degenerate roof. With the stench of sin equivalent to a whorehouse. They are armed not with guns, but with the power of law and seek to exercise it to the fullest extent for maximum personal gain. Enjoying the unearned fruits of their status they look down on us from behind a contemptful and malevolent sneers in false security under a mistaken belief that we are powerless. A look of disgust from they, our betters, to us, the false "lesser." I can point to countless examples of our so called "leaders" behaving in disgrace of the offices they falsely obtained under fake pretenses. Swearing an oath to uphold the constitution and then immediately betraying it.