>It is worth noting that the platforms most flamboyantly dedicated to a borrowed idea of free speech and assembly are the same ones that have struggled most intensely with groups of users who seek to organize and disrupt their platforms.

THIS is what ultimately changed my mind about whether Internet companies should offer "free speech" as a positive. I used to believe that the antidote to hateful speech was simply more speech. But every site that's been tried on, fell to more and more hateful speech, pushing and bending and breaking the norms, until sane people left out of disgust or were relegated to their own, more moderated, parts of the site.

Germany and other European countries with anti-Nazi laws have it right (and no, they haven't descended into totalitarian regimes, the slippery slope simply stopped at "Don't be a Nazi".)