I experience Lemmy as a reflection of many of the problems in the world; there seems to be little effort to understand and respect different viewpoints. Instead of being curious about opinions one disagrees with, the community often feels almost aggressive. People end up in their own trenches. What about trying to be more open and curious about our differences instead?
Apparently we believe in freedom of speech—so long as the speech is something we agree with…
I’ll preface by repeating what you said: we don’t know what the OP is talking about.
But, yeah, very often when somebody is complaining about free speech…they don’t mean free speech. What they mean is that their opinion should be accepted without criticism or consequence.
What this outlook has resulted in, in many places in the contemporary western world (the world I’m familiar with), is that hate speech, aggressive speech and threatening speech are protected - even encouraged - while the speech of those functionally suppressed or intimidated is ignored or attacked.
My opinion is that conservative speech has become a huge problem. It’s ironically social media bubbles that make so-called conservatives believe that their once marginalized opinions are more popular or legitimate than they are. I believe that conservatives want everybody to be forced to listen to their opinions until they agree with them or face consequences if they don’t.
The tolerance paradox. If we let intolerant thoughts through, they quickly become domineering and push for exactly what we see. So, the only thing to be intolerant of is intolerance itself.