Anything that broke the "echochamber" is what got downvoted but this was never strictly about downvoting it was about moderation so im not sure why you shifted the focus to downvotes. We know you're trying to essentially say the people who got downvoted or moderated deserved it because they said things so "bad" they deserved to be moderated. I'm not sure that's always true or even mostly true.

You're right that free speech typically means the ability to speak freely without government intervention but I think you're being obtuse if you don't see how those implications could be limited by corporations online and if you're comfortable with censorship online not being democratically decided upon that's cool but I don't trust the corporations as much as you do i guess.