I believe you (and Snowden) are catastrophizing, or in other words self-cancelling. You have chosen to dramatically curtail your self-expression out of fear of social consequences.
It seems that what you fear is being "attack[ed] publicly." If that's the case, what you fear is that others will express themselves in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Wouldn't the cause of free speech be better advanced by defending to the death their right to express themselves, rather than by casting that expression as the death knell of modern society? If your side were to "win" this culture war, a whole lot of speech would be suppressed by new social norms. Free speech for me but not for thee.
If you walk into a bar and start mouthing off, there's a decent chance you'll get punched in the face. This is bad and a crime, but I never hear anyone talk about how it's a sign of the deterioration of free speech norms. Why is that?
This is what I mean by catastrophizing. In response to speech that makes you uncomfortable you have chosen to give up on self-expression on controversial topics (except this one apparently) and martyr yourself. But no one is forcing you to do that. The arena of public discourse is still open to all comers.
To the extent that I see any coherent position in the free-speech-substack cinematic universe, it's rather anodyne: "people should be nicer to each other." True enough as far as it goes.
Not OP, but there's a difference between having a legitimate and interesting discussion involving unpopular opinions and simply mouthing off at a bar. However, the reaction on the internet today tends to be one and the same for both cases: the online equivalent of being punched in the face. Being attacked publicly can go beyond uncomfortable in many cases (complaints to your work, family, death threats, etc).
The written word used to involve significant barriers that made one consider everything they said. It was also taken as a more formal medium, as it tended to be more permanent. Today, instead, you can express yourself online with next to no effort, and the majority of people write down thoughts as if they were in a verbal conversation, which has a far different permanence to it. I occasionally scroll back through comments I've even made myself on this site and have no recollection of what I was thinking or the comment when I said it. Yet there it is as a permanent record of who I am/was. Given that, I'd rather keep my controversial opinions to myself on social media, as I may not even hold those opinions in the future. I'll use meatspace discussions with friends, colleagues and others I respect to refine them, rather than the 'arena' of public opinion.
> In response to speech that makes you uncomfortable
It is not in response to speech that makes people feel uncomfortable.
Instead it is in response to people attempting to dox you, target your friends and family and children, as well as possibly people's workplaces, and in the most extreme cases, make threats or attempts on one's life.
> The arena of public discourse is still open to all comers.
If your family gets threatened, and your children get stalked, due to things that you say, then in those cases I would not describe the area of public discourse being open.
All the things that I have described, are a threat to free speech, even if it isn't literally the government stalking down children, due to dislike of things that people are saying.
The point is that the social consequences of a comment can be catastrophic. There is the potential to lose your job, lose your friends, lose your family. Even if your opinion was just miswritten, misunderstood, misquoted, outdated, or immature one can be attacked for seemingly random reasons.
But don’t your friends and family have a right to come to their own conclusions about you? Maybe they learned something new about you and don’t like you anymore. maybe that’s unfair, you feel you’ve been mis*. But lots of things are unfair. Lots of people are misunderstood all the time. There is no affirmative right to have your coworkers at happy hour find you charming. Why should there be one for online discourse?
It seems that what you fear is being "attack[ed] publicly." If that's the case, what you fear is that others will express themselves in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Wouldn't the cause of free speech be better advanced by defending to the death their right to express themselves, rather than by casting that expression as the death knell of modern society? If your side were to "win" this culture war, a whole lot of speech would be suppressed by new social norms. Free speech for me but not for thee.
If you walk into a bar and start mouthing off, there's a decent chance you'll get punched in the face. This is bad and a crime, but I never hear anyone talk about how it's a sign of the deterioration of free speech norms. Why is that?
This is what I mean by catastrophizing. In response to speech that makes you uncomfortable you have chosen to give up on self-expression on controversial topics (except this one apparently) and martyr yourself. But no one is forcing you to do that. The arena of public discourse is still open to all comers.
To the extent that I see any coherent position in the free-speech-substack cinematic universe, it's rather anodyne: "people should be nicer to each other." True enough as far as it goes.