You're absolutely right about the fundamental tension here. Aaron's vision of truly free information is inspiring, and his work shaped how I think about these problems.

The challenge is that even the most open platforms eventually hit practical problems - spam, harassment, off-topic flooding. The question becomes: who decides what stays and what goes?

What you're describing sounds like the difference between censorship (authority-driven) and curation (community-driven). Maybe the goal isn't eliminating all filtering, but making the process transparent and democratic?