That’s literally not free speech. If I say I like to eat broccoli every day and that people should try it for health reasons and you’re some kind of carnivore mod and it tickles you the wrong way and you block me for it… That’s censorship and the opposite of free speech.
You’re telling me that you control the narrative. Now there’s nuance to censorship for sure, but you’re telling me that if you don’t like what I say I’m out. I have to type within the confines of the bubble of what isn’t too uncomfortable for you.
I say let the downvotes do the talking. If I go on the electric vehicles instance talking about how (non-ironocally) I love to roll coal and how that’s what’s keeping me from trying EVs, I expect to be downvoted into the shadow realm. And that’s ok. What I’m not ok with is a mod assuming that my voice sucks and that I don’t deserve to be heard. Maybe some smart lemmier(?) will point out some doodad that makes a brrr noise and shoots out some harmless mist or something.
You have the right to be an asshole. Mods have the right to ban you for being an asshole.
Making out that they’re nasty for having some standards of behaviour in their area is calling good bad and bad good.
(Censorship is when local or national government put you in prison for protesting or ban your book or ban your ideas. That’s when your free speech rights are being infringed.)
Where and when in the history of ever has there been consequence-free speech? How is this definition at all useful to you? People have always had the ability to define our own social spaces with rules of conduct, why is this any different just because the social space is online?