[rosmax_1337]

Have you considered why those places become grim places? Does free speech lead to those ideas? That would be quite a out-there conclusion. Rather, those people can only express themselves on forums like that, they are banned on all the other mediums. If free speech was set as a standard on all mediums, those people would express themselves evenly on facebook, youtube and the chans, rather than being penned into fringe spaces like the chans. I think that society should be more clear about the stance on this, either their speech is banned throughout society, and free speech isn't quite what it used to be, or their speech is tolerated throughout society, and free speech remains.

[mrtranscendence]

I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that we should either ban racist speech outright (let's assume for argument that the speech in question is unquestionably, disgustingly racist), or else permit it in all spaces? Clearly there should be spaces where racism shouldn't be tolerated, but banning it outright seems like a bridge too far, and could make martyrs of those who defy such rules.

[dale_glass]

They become grim because the conflict is asymmetric.

Slinging insults, hate, disinformation, or just posting plain nonsense is easy. Explaining how things work properly takes a lot of effort and is hard. Eg, saying "The moon landings were a hoax" is easy. Explaining why that makes no sense, and how exactly humans did land on the Moon takes a good amount longer.

There's also that the valuable, accomplished people in a community are a scarce resource. What would you prefer the resident rocket scientist to do, provide useful information for the community on something new going on, or try to reason with the newly arrived conspiracy theorist?

[JoshuaDavid]

If your space is the only one that doesn't have regular witch hunts, you're going to end up with a lot of witches.