Free speech absolutism is a choice that does not promote the open discussion of ideas. It is a choice that promotes the loudest and nastiest voices and pushes out everyone else.
And the moral of the history is: in 2020 the COVID lab-leak hypothesis was considered a nasty idea, one that only uneducated, bitter conspiracy theorists could support. People have been banned from the effective monopolists of public discourse over this idea.
Then sometime around 2021 the same idea became acceptable.
Not surprisingly, this change in the public perception of this idea over social media followed the viewpoint of the major political party the owners of social media cheer for.
This is bad, bad, bad for political discourse and rational thinking!!
As far as I am concerned: long love the free market of ideas!
Don't get me wrong--I think the initial response to Covid was probably overzealous, and it has lasted way too long (once we had vax, everyone should have been done with it).
My point is simply that they wielded the info/idea in an ideological way, and this led to it being dismissed, whereas if the idea was discussed and established among experts first, it would have been taken more seriously. In other words, bare, unregulated, irresponsible free speech did harm in advancing this idea.
To go the "free speech" route everyone should have to use their real identity. I realise this excludes people under repressive governments where free speech has really been lost, and you can be thrown in jail or worse for a seemingly mundane opinion.
But for those living in a democracy make them use their real identity. Otherwise everyone is just trolling with zero consequences.
Someone will ALWAYS try to game the system.
How would you prove that's happening?
If anything, with a majority of the world population living in illiberal or semi-liberal regimes, we need free speech absolutism more than before.
For example, Turkey banned and unbanned Facebook several times.