> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes.
Why exactly? You _are_ free from consequences .. from the government. But how would you expect to be free from consequences when you offend millions of people using the Internet? Why should I not be able to ban people from my forum if I and most of my users don't like them and they are dragging down the quality of the forum?
Those are consequences, and I don't see how you can have some utopia where that isn't viable. Then you just live in a world where you are forced to listen to the broadcasted thoughts of idiots.
> And just try saying it about all sorts of other freedoms and see how chilling it sounds: "freedom of the press is not freedom from consequences."
That is literally true.
News organizations are sued all the time for libel or slander, sometimes for good reason.
Hell, Fox had to backtrack on some of their voting machine coverage, recently, for precisely this reason.
In fact, this is generally true for all freedoms.
Honestly, I challenge you to name just one other human right where you believe there is no legal or social restriction on how you can exercise that right.
Explain what about that is chilling. If I make false and defamatory statements in a newspaper (person xyz is a criminal who stole money, committed crimes against children, whatever), if it is not true you can be sued. Is that wrong, you have hurt their public character? But it's nontrivial to get a conviction, there seems to be a reasonable balance. If you say "Elon Musk person is a horrible leader, scares me, makes bad choices, kills baby bunny rabbits for fun" he likely won't win a suit - but it would be costly to defend yourself.
