Exactly. Some of the best subreddits were so great because they had heavy moderation.

Probably the best example of this is askhistorians. Made a comment that was on topic but had no sources? Removed! With a clear (and public) comment of why it was removed. It was clearly stated in their rules that this was required, so it was absolutely justified.

We have no idea what these comments were and whether they were in violation of the sub's rules.

Let's shit on reddit for the actual things that are going wrong. This seems more like getting outraged over a picture of your ex with another guy/girl/whatever gender their interested in in the background.

This was also my immediate thought

You're probably right, they are likely comments riding the top comments to "fight the system" or maybe Reddit is getting botted.

Old guy here, wondering what Scandinavian Airlines has to do with any of this. Seriously, what's SAS?

Absolutely. Reddit has been shit for a long time.

Private company and free speech… this remind me something like MElon Usk… I meant Elon Musk. We know how it ended

According to the people most likely to feel oppressed by the existence of rules limiting what they can do or say, yes.

Practically speaking? No. Reddit branded itself as "free speech" and pseudo-libertarian during it's launch phase, from a combination of the political leanings of its founders and as a cynical branding decision to differentiate itself from its competition. It never actually was a free-speech platform, so much as a platform that saw free speech as a branding decision and would generally aim to preserve that veneer when there wasn't a good reason to go against it.

In addition to the legal arguments around "platform" vs. "publisher", a solid portion of how the subreddit system started and why it's structured the way it is was so that Reddit Inc and Reddit.com could posture as being broadly "pro free speech" while letting mods take the heat for the content being removed.

During the Yishan/Pao eras, people were forever citing Swartz, Spez, and kn0thing as OG founders who believed in "free speech!!" that new admin and bad mods were destroying their original vision. The Spez came back and made it clear he's not aligned that way. kn0thing very publicly and firmly stated that Reddit was never about absolute free speech and admin had been quietly removing shit for years, this time Pao just announced it. So now you still get originalists trying to argue that Swartz was a free speech absolutist founder whose vision supersedes all the rest as the Pure and True and justifying their outrage. I think if Swartz were still alive during that fiasco, he wouldn't have been digging in to defend their absolute right to screech slurs at people or rally hate brigades against the spherically-inclined; or even continuing to support free speech absolutism in abstract for the platform.

Enforcing clearly defined rules, to ensure the discussion remains on topic and civilized, what's wrong with that?

AskWomen felt to me like the kind of place where the mods always set out with clear and understandable intentions, but where the end results became less than the sum of its parts. They wanted to create a safe space and they had all the rights and arguments to do so. And they succeeded. And it became so safe that its practically living as a bubble-boy now.

People tend to improperly conflate “free speech” with “1st Amendment to the US Constitution”.

While the 1st amendment was based on the concept of “free speech”, people are correct in pointing out that it specifically applies to 1: political speech (ie: “I hate my congressman, and the president is a moron”) and 2: official government response to that speech (forbidding the passing ordinances saying things like “insulting the president is grounds for a $100 fine”, etc.)

That being said, the idea of “free speech” and what it further represents (the idea of a “marketplace of ideas”) is very much an important facet of any democratic society (speaking socially, regardless of politics to be clear). It is the social concept of the marketplace of ideas and free speech that should absolutely matter in this context (speaking to privately owned platforms generally, not this specific instance, considering the complete lack of context in the screenshots lol).

I mean legaly you're right but free speech as a concept still applies to private companies they just dont have to follow it