> What are you referring to? The situation I thought we were discussing was an invited speaker attempting to speak and people in the audience preventing him fro

> What are you referring to? The situation I thought we were discussing was an invited speaker attempting to speak and people in the audience preventing him from doing that by shouting so that he can't be heard and is forced to leave. I was thinking of things like people heavily protesting the event without actually being in the room. > Maybe my example wasn't clear. In the world in which it is perfectly fine to prevent others from speaking by disrupting them by heckling, and yelling, everyone is susceptible to being prevented from speaking. So you get an echo chamber in which speakers can only preach to people who are already in their choir. In that world, there is no need to have fire hoses or attack dogs to silence people with whom we disagree because it is perfectly acceptable to use our "free speech" to silence them. The comparison with people like MLK doesn't strike me as very apt. Anyways, I am not sure there is much practical evil to the echo chamber thing. For one thing, people already self-segregate and don't want to hear from people who aren't in their respective "tribe" or "echo chamber" or w/e. For another, I don't think that a lot of disagreement on polarizing issues comes down to "I never heard what the other side's argument or justification for their position is".