> The cultural value of defending the right of people you dislike to express ideas that you disagree with, because the value and importance of free expression g

> The cultural value of defending the right of people you dislike to express ideas that you disagree with, because the value and importance of free expression goes beyond the short-term unpleasantness of ugly opinions. This is what we are losing You are really missing the point though. Part of the balance is that one still cannot escape the consequences of their free expression. That's the backpressure that makes it work. Email is a medium with which lacked that kind of backpressure and suffered by massive amounts of spam. Filtering out spam is preventing "free expression". If you don't have backpressure, you won't get the free expression you imagine, because the noise will overwhelm everything else.