[grzm]

While I'm sympathetic to the sentiment of not wanting to silence legitimate, civil discourse, I'd like to think there's some middle ground that's broadly acceptable.

We don't tolerate people running around cussing at others with impunity. (I'm not going to go into the "contrary opinions" aspect of it, because I think at least for a first approximation general uncivil speech works well enough.)

The penalties for doing this in real life are also offset by the cost of actually doing it: you have to physically be there, and others can retreat to private spaces. Online you can spin up fake accounts and bots with nearly all of the cost of dealing with it on the part of the recipient (by for example, blocking the user).

What do you think? This is something I've been thinking earnestly about and I'm interested in others opinions.