I believe in freedom of speech in the same way I believe in democracy. If you are only using the system to destroy the system, you don't belong in the system.
Can a company that promises total freedom of expression walk back that promise? Yes, the trolls (if they are trolls) are a threat to the business model, or at least they are limiting the growth of the company. They are probably gleeful that they are allowed to do it, have co-opted a social media platform, and love the hateful attention.
“Can a company that promises total freedom of expression walk back that promise?”
I visit one web site (not social media) where they control the crazies with a limit of three posts per hour.
That works really well—brush fires can’t become flame wars and the bots do not overwhelm the site.
If you know you can only make three points in an hour it encourages you to make them count.
;-)
Probably not. It would be extremely difficult to stay true to the idea of supporting the first amendment without allowing trolls. You basically have to have a bit of faith of the normal folks on the site. I think John R found pretty darn early on that being even marginally absolutist on the 1st amendment is a relatively easy way to get completely run over by trolls. I respect his point of view as is obvious since I've been on this site for an insanely long time. Sometimes it chafes because legitimate points of inquiry (IMO) are cut off, but really, in the big scheme of things, the things that can't be discussed is really fairly small here.
Andrew has decided to live with the garbage, to facilitate the conversation. I support both approaches with my money. I'd love to see Andrew do some serious analysis of server logs to identify trolls. I suspect a lot of that goes on in the background that we would never see, mainly because he prefers the lighter approach in moderation. If I'm still around on Gab 20 years from now, it will be interesting to see how it evolves.