I mean, I understand what you’re saying and it is true here on lemmy, but it is absolutely not the case that you don’t have to self-censor on the internet. I mean, you can choose to not to, but some systems will just never show your contribution to the conversation to anyone (ex. tiktok, Facebook, YouTube, etc). So people practice self-censorship to engage with those platforms and then it becomes a part of their online vocabulary.
So, you don’t need to self-censor here on lemmy, but you also shouldn’t give anyone flak for doing so.