There is no free speech without accountability. In both the cases of censorship and unmoderated speech, silencing of opinion takes place. In the former the silencing is through authority fiat; in the latter, by "shouting down", misrepresenting foes, making threats, and poisoning discussion from the inside.
In both cases, there's a presumption that some actors will aim only to "win," and thus treachery is necessary. However, if we treat political discussions as an iterated game like that of Prisoner's Dilemma, then what we really need to know to make a good decision is, "who is saying this and are they credible?" If they are not credible, then "tit for tat" applies and we eliminate their opinion in computing upsides and downsides to a policy.
At the low level where politics are encountered, of course, we don't have visibility to that kind of information. We have lengthy texts and short zingers that build arguments that may or may not be credible, and we have to go through them one by one.
> ""shouting down", misrepresenting foes, making threats, and poisoning discussion from the inside"
Making threats is a serious problem -- and is also not a form of protected speech. Intentionally misrepresenting foes in certain ways is considered defamation and is also not protected.
The others are lesser problems as long as there are strong legal protections in place. The problems of being shouted down or (non-maliciously) misrepresented are mitigated by having your own platform from which to speak. Discussion being poisoned from the inside is mitigated by people realizing someone is poisonous and treating them as an outsider in the future. These things are still obnoxious, but they don't tip the scales in favor of significant speech restrictions.
In both cases, there's a presumption that some actors will aim only to "win," and thus treachery is necessary. However, if we treat political discussions as an iterated game like that of Prisoner's Dilemma, then what we really need to know to make a good decision is, "who is saying this and are they credible?" If they are not credible, then "tit for tat" applies and we eliminate their opinion in computing upsides and downsides to a policy.
At the low level where politics are encountered, of course, we don't have visibility to that kind of information. We have lengthy texts and short zingers that build arguments that may or may not be credible, and we have to go through them one by one.