"No, those are chilling effects due to uncertainty about the stance of the moderating staff because they side with an increasingly smaller and louder minority."

"No, those are chilling effects due to uncertainty about the stance of the moderating staff because they side with an increasingly smaller and louder minority." This seems like misuse of the term "chilling effects" to mean, "I don't like it when someone tells me to stop being an asshole." The common usage of the term "chilling effects" is when legal mechanisms are used, such as cease and desist letters and DMCA takedown notices, where the threat of legal repercussions are used to shut down communication. To apply it to someone calling out the use of a sexist slur, for example, is to diminish the term "chilling effects" or to elevate some people's free speech (usually that of white males) above the free speech of everyone else. In short, a lot of the time when free speech is used as an argument, it is because others are exercising their free speech to criticize something shitty someone said. It isn't breaking free speech to call out sexist/racist/homophobic language for being sexist/racist/homophobic, it is exercising it in the best way possible. Now, of course, if moderation is used aggressively even in questionable cases, that's a different thing, and one worth discussing (with the moderators of said site). It isn't really "chilling effects", I don't think, because a privately owned community website choosing to enforce its own customs and norms is almost certainly not oppression, even if we don't like their choices.