> when you could run a platform where rule #1 was "Free speech is absolute and guaranteed", and could actually fulfill that promise without consequence.

This is ridiculously ahistorical. The only time you found consequence-free speech on the Internet was when the reach was small or people that might not care didn't pay attention.

Platforms got shut down or censored all the time. Usenet access from an ISP's NNTP servers would often be missing a lot of groups or sometimes while hierarchies. Web hosts would take down pages or suspend accounts regularly. Even before widespread Internet access BBSes would get taken down. Steve Jackson Games' BBS got raided by the Secret Service because it had promo copy for a cyberpunk game they were writing. Rust n' Edie's BBS got taken down for software piracy and then sued because someone uploaded scans from Playboy.

The whole reason PGP exists is because Phil Zimmerman was concerned talking about anti-nuclear protests would attract the attention of the government. Pretty much every aspect of old cypherpunk developments were done because there was no assumption speech on the Internet was free from consequences.

20 years ago free speech was still limited by the laws - if you have a site or if you host a site that does something illegal, it'll be taken down. 20 years ago and today. Consequences haven't changed, and I feel like you're glorifying the internet from 20 years ago as some ultimate free place.