I think this is a misunderstanding of what's going on here. The issue isn't hiding away messages - notably you can still find whatever they're saying fine, the

I think this is a misunderstanding of what's going on here. The issue isn't hiding away messages - notably you can still find whatever they're saying fine, the ban only applies to public speaking events. The point is that particularly antagonistic speakers attract attention not for the debate on the subject matter proper, but precisely for the rousing antagonism itself. So you're not necessarily going to get any real debate; nor will these speakers suffer in the brutal harsh light of public discussion - they'll thrive (regardless of the details of the message itself - that doesn't actually matter!) on public anger. That's not constructive, nor is it what free speech is about. You're not helping everybody find truth, or any approximation thereof: you're holding a shouting match. You might think that's not so harmful. After all, people should be able to enjoy a kind of shared inspiration, and rational people wouldn't let that affect the conceptually unrelated issue of what was said. However, people - including you and me - aren't actually very good at separating serious message from noise; the way you consume information has an impact on your ability to process it usefully. It's not some hypothetical risk that whatever extreme standpoint the hostile speaker takes will can gain traction because people agree with their anger - misattributing their shared worries to whatever coincidentally happened to be the message used to spark controversy. This has happened many, many times before - and even though that's easy to see in retrospect, that didn't prevent the people caught up in the heat of the moment from going along with it. I wouldn't want to suggest that controlling the message doesn't have its own risks - but that just means this is a tricky balance to make. What's certain is that fully unrestricted speech is harmful. Note that every society takes that for granted: they all have rules about incitement to violence or even terrorism, rules about deceiving others in various situations (fraud, perjury, truth in advertising), and rules about libel, and probably more. Getting the best out of free speech takes some tuning; it's not black and white. I think the no-platforming rules seem perhaps somewhat excessive, by the way. But I don't think it's an issue of yay! free speech! either.