An important point to consider is that when you're negotiating with someone, you want to ask for more than you actually want. You're going to get push-back and

An important point to consider is that when you're negotiating with someone, you want to ask for more than you actually want. You're going to get push-back and will have to compromise. If you asked for more than what you wanted, then you can get closer to your actually desired result. Imagine that the argument is laid out on a scale of 0 to 1. 0 being no free speech at all and 1 being absolute free speech. If you're arguing with someone that wants 0.6 and you want 0.8 then it makes sense for you to say that you want 1.0. If you then compromise with the other party, the result is likely to be closer to 0.8 than if you had argued for 0.8 directly. One other thing is that it is cumbersome to refer to ~0.95 in text and speech. "Abolish almost all restrictions on speech," sounds a lot weaker than "Abolish all restrictions on speech." When somebody says they are a free speech absolutist, it's highly likely that they simply want fewer restrictions on speech than currently exist.