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> And why aren't you considering the countervailing harm to society of centralized moderation? Are there reproducible studies showing that? What is the effect size? (These objections go both ways!)
To see why, consider that the space of possible actions someone could not take is infinite. If there's an expectation that someone do a ton of research and work to argue for why they are not doing something, then the amount of work they would have to do is thus also infinite. This way lies madness, which is why in reality the default outcome that results from not acting is always taken as a given.
Sometimes this reality is obfuscated by activists. They find some group of people who are just doing their thing, and demand that those people do some extra things (usually some costly things). The arguments they make for this are weak, but when the targeted people say they'd rather not do those extra things the activists demand their targets argue for not doing what the activists want to whatever level of effort (or greater) they themselves made. This can be an effective bullying tactic but isn't legitimate: it's on those who want action to argue the case for it, not those who don't to argue against.
Digital platforms like social networks default to uncensored. If the operators do nothing, then by the way they are built content is allowed. It takes additional work to categorize posts and block certain kinds of content. So the default outcome is free speech. If someone wants someone else to do work to suppress that, then it's on them to prove that it's truly necessary and that the benefits outweigh the harms. But that doesn't cut both ways; it's not required for other people to take on the argument for free speech. That's the default outcome so it just wins by default if the other side can't prove their case to a sufficiently convincing level.