>> Also, how free speech are those venues in the early internet? Were they literally "as long as it's legal we'll let you post it"? Yes. On Usenet you could an

>> Also, how free speech are those venues in the early internet? Were they literally "as long as it's legal we'll let you post it"? Yes. On Usenet you could and still can post anything you want. Even if is/was illegal. Warez, drugs, and other less-then-savory stuff have had whole boards devoted to them. >>Could you get away with spamming racist posts, or would you get shunned/blocked by the community? Once again yes. On Usenet, you could get kicked from a particular discussion depending whether an admin thought one was racist, not racist enough, or for any reason at all. However, there was nothing stopping one from making a different account and continuing to use the same board. After all, there wasn't a real name or email requirement a la Facebook back then or even today. Think 4chan or early Reddit but with more academics. That's what Usenet was and, to a more limited extent, so were BBSs. >>It's not free of scoundrels, but they're diluted and moderated to the point that you don't notice them. The dilution you speak of is a passive one and never permanent. It just happens to exist because most people are ignorant and uninterested enough to not give to certain types of scoundrels for the time being much serious attention. Their ignorance serves as a buffer against the spread of ideas. But up to a point. That same ignorance breeds naiveté towards seriously considering certain critical issues and leaves them susceptible to manipulation when faced with an issue one "feels" is important, but lacks an internalized explanation for. At a some critical juncture - a word said, a topic raised - the once blissful, sleeping giant of collective ignorance thrusts itself into the tumult armed with nothing by shoddy memes and crackpot ideas peddled by the scoundrels of their choosing. Except those scoundrels don't call themselves "scoundrels". These mainstream-appealing types call themselves "Joe Blow", " just a guy like you", a "clinical expert", a "thinker", a "hard-hitting journalist", etc. Maybe they believe their own drek or maybe they sell their horseshit with knowing impunity. Either way, mainstream audiences are generally less well-equipped (and likely less interested) to actively think through their chosen scoundrels positions, despite the wishful thinking behind the "wisdom of the crowds"-types suggesting otherwise. On a free speech platform, a la Voat or Usenet, you know what you're getting itself into without any of the pretensions. The value in the content is in digesting the premises and principles behind one's thinking. How close one is to recreating society or its proclaimed values is not the goal or the measure by which one delineates, or should delineate, scoundrels from non-scoundrels. Doing so just breeds stagnation and scoundrels of a different strain: empty-headed, hypocritical pundits.