to elaborate a bit more on this thread, where I focus on structural censorship and concentration of resources and power which makes liberal "free speech absolutism" inherently pro-status quo: the notion itself is impossible and skews toward serving power
reason for this is simple: given constraints on one's time and attention it's impossible to principally oppose every infringement on free speech in practice, however one may want to do this (eg tweet about it, write an article, give an interview). so this already acts as a filter
this first filter eliminates from view a huge swath of cases of free speech violations. but it gets worse: the cases that do come to your attention and are presented as sufficiently important for you to pay attention and devote time to it are pre-selected and framed for you
this goes back to the structural censorship, but in a more nuanced way. you, the naive liberal free speech absolutist, who only have so much hours in a day to put into practice your beliefs, are presented cases of free speech violations by a select group of elite media grifters
your scope of "free speech being violated" has at this point become so narrow as to be meaningless, but you think you're a genuine free speech absolutist putting into practice your beliefs by boosting an infinitesimal pre-selected group of cases that are already given attention
so you see, "free speech absolutism" is a practical impossibility, and always ends up highlighting cases that are already being highlighted by people who constructed them specifically for that purpose, to serve power and smear those without it
it's just bizarre to me how people, some quite intelligent, are incapable of realizing this simple truism. they're so embedded in a particular culture that they can't move beyond its incredibly narrow confines. it's the very definition of ideology as mannheim described it 
btw this kind of practice-oriented critique of "free speech absolutism", an incoherent concept exactly due to its practical effects that undermine its stated principle, isn't anything new. as I noted in the original thread chomsky engages in it often. so what should you do?
if you actually care about free speech on principle, and realize what I just mentioned about how practical constraints and concentration of power and resources distort it, you have to use your scarce time to find and focus on those violations that are not given attention
because that is the only way you can actualize the principle of free speech absolutism in a way that adheres to its proclaimed goal of maximizing free speech generally. using your scarce time to focus on pre-selected contrived cases already in focus does the opposite of that
there is a secondary element. when you intentionally look for the free speech violations outside the extremely narrow pre-selected cases, you still run up against the initial scarcity of time constraint. there are just so many to focus on you have to ultimately pick and choose
how do you pick and choose? well that depends on your normative proclivities. do you want to spend your time defending nazis or do you want to defend pro-palestine activists? I rather prefer a society where the latter view is normalized, so it's an easy choice
but that's also true for the pre-selected narrow cases of free speech violations, carefully chosen by conservatives and liberals in line with their normative views. which has the additional pernicious effect of diverting attention away from the vast majority of other cases
lol I know this stuff is boring but it's necessary to expose this front of virtuous adherence to principles these "free speech absolutist" types hide behind. it's a highly attractive and appealing brand that fools a lot of people, but it's based on nothing. it's pure sophistry
