As long as we allow folks to flip out and go crazy over bits of text, or even images appearing on their screen that they don't like or are offended by, nothing will will work.
You see, in your situation, if you don't like what somebody is saying you uninvited them from the table. But on the internet, folks demand the offender be removed from the internet -- this won't scale.
What nearly all social media needs to do is simply hide users or content from somebody when they "flag" or "report" it. This scales nicely.
But no! we demand they remove it from the internet and ban them from contributing anything further. This is liken to getting into a argument at the dinner table, being offending, and then killing the offender so they can't offend you again, verses just ending future interactions with this person. Yeah, you might see them at the store, and yeah, they might have have to look away passing them in on the street, but the majority of the content you don't like coming from them is removed from your life.
But that is not good enough, you want this person to not be able to share the ideas, topic, or crude joke you did not like with anybody else.
I don't know what it is about the internet, but folks seem to think they should have way more control over what others do than they normally would in the real world.
It's the scale, speed, and reach that makes it a different beast. It's the difference between a party popper and a flashbang; similar principles, but completely different implications.
You're taking an overly simplified view of the power of internet speech. It's not that people are merely "offended." It's that an individual can be on the wrong end of an internet mob for which there's no accountability. By your standards, swatting is a perfectly acceptable outcome as long as the victim had the opportunity to mute their harrassers. Likewise, poisoning someone's reputation and making them unemployable is fine too. It's just words, right?
Folks don't get swatted via tweet, meem, or fb post. They have to pick p the phone and commit a real crime.
> Likewise, poisoning someone's reputation and making them unemployable is fine too. It's just words, right?
We have had laws against this long before the internet. Maybe they need strengthened.
Edit:
We are clearly talking about two different cases. We have things that are already illegal, and should continue to be illegal. Your examples are both something covered by existing laws.
On the other hand, we have folks who want to ban things that are legal, simply because they are offended. I can name a few, but in this clement, it would not be wise.
Oh, look at that. Self moderation.
As for becoming unemployable. If there was truly free speech, nearly everyone would get it and it would be obviously unreliable so employers would disregard that signal. Even if that didn't work, stricter labor laws might prohibit hiring discrimination based on internet rumors, same as we do for race/sex/etc. discrimination.
Of course that's pure arrogance and complete disregard for the concept of democracy and respect for other people's ability to think.
and the last time that happened in the USA, it lead to the civil war.
For most of human history, if you had a fringe idea, your community would be extremely skeptical until you came up with something to convince them - or, more likely, concluded "huh, no-one else thinks this, I must be wrong" and veered back into the mainstream.
Even in the days _just before_ the internet, with pervasive newspapers and TV, your 'circle of validation' would've been _much_ smaller.