Kinda like that, yeah, but, I think, less when it’s politically convenient, and more just, that it’s like a fundamental character flaw. They wear the coat of free speech, but then they aren’t actually capable of engaging in what I see as legitimate speech or communication, and they’re not capable of engaging with or internalizing outside ideas. They’re not capable of actually using it, basically.
It’s sort of like how, you know, you can support free speech, but then also, most people would end up blocking commercial spam, or like, very blatant trolling. Only the stupidest people would see that as a kind of hypocrisy, because their definition of “speech” doesn’t encompass spam and blatant trolling. Most people would kind of leave it there, but I also think it’s potentially a good idea to block out (hard to distinguish as it is) bad faith communication, under the guise that it’s not actually communication. At least, if not to block it outright, then to ignore it, or maybe, take a different approach to it. Logical fallacies are like intellectual spam, disguised as real thought, to make it harder to distinguish and boost engagement. I don’t qualify that as being like, real speech, basically. So I find it mildly amusing that people who are so vested in free speech are not really capable of using it, basically.
I don’t necessarily think it’s like, bad, that they defend free speech, at least conceptually, right, but I do think it’s terribly ironic that they’ll defend everyone’s ability to do something, but then they have no capacity to engage with it or really use it themselves. My cynical tendency is that they’re realistically not defending real free speech, when they say they’re “supportive of free speech”, but they’re really just defending their own ability to suck down bad faith arguments, conspiracies, bro-culture grindset shit, and maybe even hate speech, from their information pipes.
So, that’s kind of a long-winded way to say that you’re correct, yeah.