> We are and have always been allowed to have whatever opinions we wanted on any of the regular platforms, so long as it doesn't affect the rights of others
If only it were that simple, because that's demonstrably not true. I'll give you a perfect example that was made clear by recent events.
Before last month, it was against Meta's rules to say that being LGBT was a mental illness. Similarly, you couldn't say people had a mental illness due to their religion.
But by this point I think it should be pretty clear that, in many respects, what we define as a "mental illness" is not some hard and fast rule, it's largely what we see as beyond the norm of socially acceptable boundaries at any given time.
I am gay. For someone else to have an opinion that being gay is a mental illness is a perfectly valid opinion, and it doesn't infringe on my rights (as long as they're not advocating for locking me up or whatever). I literally see no need to prohibit people from expressing the valid opinion that my being gay is a mental illness (I may think you're an asshole, but being a jerk certainly isn't banned on the Internet).
So when Meta announced their policy change to allow more "free speech", at first I was like "Ok, cool". I only became livid when I read the policy and saw that it's still against their rules to say people in "protected groups" have a mental illness except for a specific carve out for gay and trans people. F that. So I have to pretend all of the completely absurd religious nonsense about believing some sky fairy is out there and randomly does things like performing miracles (but for some reason never obvious enough to actually be miraculous) is not a sign of mental illness, but being gay is? Yeah, free speech my ass.
Point being, in your comment you have basically made an arbitrary division between what "whatever opinions" are valid, and what counts as e.g. racism, and pretend that it's a clear line.
