Defederation opinions aside, free speech should be protected from a legal standpoint, and the ACLU is all about that. I’m glad you pointed this out, sorry about the downvotes - free speech is an important legal right.

To add my perspective - in terms of defederation, I’d say that is an example of a healthy boundary, which needs to be respected as well. If folks collectively want to create a personal boundary that they don’t want to discuss antivax theory in their space, that’s also cool. We set up boundaries like this all the time as communities - churches are a good example. Sure, you can legally swear in church, but the community set a boundary that they don’t want that there, and they might punt you out of the community if you disrespect it. One of the nice things about the Fediverse is that free speech is “legal”, as is you can use the software freely for whatever you want to say or discuss because of the open source license, but there are also tools like defederation to create reasonable boundaries among communities.

I hope more folks start to think of it this way as federation catches on and that this concept helps make room for nuance in discussion again. Healthy boundaries that keep you psychologically safe are good and necessary. In real life, we wouldn’t think it’s good or healthy to let someone constantly badger or berate us or talk about things we don’t want to discuss anymore. We’d say “end the conversation and walk away”. I think it’s okay to bring those boundaries to the internet too.