"Do not do to others what you don't want be done to you" is a good starting point on which free speech should be allowed and which should not. You should not have freedom to curtail the freedoms of others.
There's a famous Austrian philosopher named Karl Popper, who saw the rise of the Nazis, how they abused the freedoms extended to them and what horrors that brought.
Shortly after the end of WW2, he came to this conclusion:
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
[...]
> We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
Personally, I agree with this logic. Uncurtailed freedom only works as long as people don't use it to curtail the freedoms of others and that sort of abuse has to be stopped in the interest of freedom.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
Hard to describe posting awful garbage on twitter as "[forbidding] their followers to listen to rational argument" or answering those arguments "by the use of their fists or pistols". One might make the argument that it isn't "[meeting] us on the level of rational argument", but one could easily make the argument that all of twitter by it's very nature of tossing bumpersticker sized sound bites over the walls at each other isn't anything remotely approacing "rational argument".
And so you use force and violence on that person. What other groups are "guilty by association" that we should curtail their speech because some of their members have committed acts of violence in the name of their movement? Antifa? Communists? Environmentalists? BLM? Socialists? Anarchists? Union organizers? Can you confidently assert that you belong to no groups such that if the political winds changed you'd be comfortable allowing your opponents the authority to censor your group's speech if any members commit violence?
It's so funny to me to read this long comment with Popper quotes (from a book I read in the original German, no less) employed towards complete annihilation of the straw man that is "total free speech".
Nobody* wants incitements to actual crimes on twitter.
Nobody* wants "freedom" to post racial slurs on twitter. That shits get's even censored on "patriots.win" which is the successor of reddit/r/the_donald
People concerned about online censorship worry about these issues among other:
* conservative rappers getting banned for saying "okay dude" while lefty checkmarks can freely post violent fantasies about their political opponents.
* Alexander Berenson and probably others being banned on behalf of the US government
* people getting arrested in the UK because "anti-LGBTQ social media post 'caused anxiety'"
* people getting arrested for posts that are just political speech now in Germany, Austrialia, Sweden all over really
* people getting banned / demonetized on Youtube for not following the party line on COVID even if they discuss peer reviewed studies and official data
Let's not pretend the current free speech debate is about empowering racists to say the N-word more.
Thanks for the classic example of a pathos argument, this is something that both political parties excel at: take a single example of a tragedy and use it as an emotional hammer to stifle dissent.
Of course, we need not reason about or think about the atrocities that have resulted from government controlled media and speech - according to your point, we're supposed to infer that somehow maybe if we just controlled speech more this awful thing wouldn't have happened.
Nevermind that the shooter was apparently non-binary, suffered awful abuse, was bullied and severely disturbed... No the solution is to limit that pesky free speech. Then everything will be fine?
Oh, and also the link you posted doesn't in any way represent what you claim it did. Nothing in there celebrated the shooting, that link discusses "libs of TikTok" account criticizing an organization that promotes drag performing to children. Poor timing, sure... But not exactly the smoking gun excuse to limit freedom of expression that you suggest it is.