If you start to defend freedom of speech now that Trump made some controversial decisions, your honesty is in question.

Someone only advocating for their own political crowd does not advocate for civil liberties.

There is a lot of work to do to get gain back trust. What doesn't help if you advocate for freedom of speech while your text includes the word Trump. It will never be believable.

And it wasn't some nebulous free speech culture, it was partisanship that failed the concept of freedom of speech severely. That isn't on Trump, it is on pushes for deplatforming and co, which haven't been forgotten. It is as simple as people advertising it aren't in favor of freedom of speech. Nothing more to it.

> no professor should be allowed to teach "gender ideology"

Good example on that topic. It lead to some professors being removed and again the partisan position was chosen. Predictable and wrong.

> This is philosophically, intellectually, and morally incoherent

Return to sender.

The criticism of free speech culture only condense to be angry at those that didn't fall in line for the political cause du jours. No need to summon anything more complex.

It's only hypocritical if he were previously calling for unrestricted free speech. Not having made a point of it previously is not evidence of hypocrisy.

Indeed, this is where Trump and Musk become the problem. Both were passionate defenders of unrestricted free speech. Now, they are the ones restricting speech.

The points that the article makes have nothing to do with the current situation. The article could have been written a decade ago. We have always known the problems of unrestricted speech on the Internet: we've had to shut down spam since practically the first minute. Flame wars made much of Usenet unusable.

It's a particularly tragic commons: speech can be unlimited, but attention is not, and all of the usual problems apply when you have infinite access to a finite resource.

Yeah, I know that angle as well. "Free speech absolutists" or "unrestricted speech", the edge case that perhaps can redeem the fragile position one inhabits. It isn't convincing either.

Conservatives, as unlikely as it would have sounded if you know their classical position, saw this opportunity. Are they convincing or trustworthy? Not at all. But enough in the political arena to take away topic around civil liberties.

> We have always known the problems of unrestricted speech

Sure, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

But sure, there are edge cases. Edge cases some almost purely political factions used to justify deplatforming people not falling in line.

> The points that the article makes have nothing to do with the current situation.

I disagree, it absolutely does because people did not forget. It wasn't egregious libel that was deplatformed, it was opinions that "caused offense" or something in that sense.

Bottom line is simple: People do not believe that current liberal political forces are very interested in hearing diverging opinion to a degree they prefer to silence critics. It isn't a Musk or Trump problem. They have nothing to do with it. Some positions just switched political factions.