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You can oppose this also from pro freedom of speech grounds without being a freedom of speech absolutist.
Personally I find the issue incoherent but I find coherent to have a situation with more vs less freedom of speech but you do need to suppress some organized pollitical comisar factions. For example, eastern european countries post communism that blacklisted communists, are freer countries than western countries today, or their own communist past.
How do you protect freedom of speech absolutism if you allow people whose idea is to suppress all who go against the globohomo "our democracy" faction.
Or take the Jewish supremacist authoritarian faction. These people use their powerful companies and organisations, and donations and plausible epstein type blackmail rings to get their way. Plus, civil rights law and the idea of antisemitism. Should the ADL and Disney have the freedom to coordinate to oppose freedom? What about the influence of people speaking advocating for censoring ideas that offend the "Jews, blacks, women" are wonderful effect? Is AIPAC donation efforts something that should be suppressed? What about journalists citing the ADL to character assassinate people? Now, obviously they utilize censorship constantly, and freedom of speech absolutism is something they oppose. But also they are a faction which there is a legitimate both pro freedom and pro the rights of the groups they have it out against, and pro truth interest in suppressing.
How do you have freedom by not taking away the freedom of political comisars? How do you avoid not losing against more ruthless factions that don't care for a universal freedom of speech and want to censor your group, and allow maximum freedom for theirs?
And is freedom of speech absolutism extending to the kind of people you select to run the pro freedom of speech institutions?
Or is their desire to act otherwise subject to restriction there, and institutions should be run by people willing to abide by certain rules and following a certain perspective? And absolutism would then be for the platforms? That would make more sense. But you do have restrictions based on ideology somewhere, even if not on the platform. Or take judges, to have freedom of speech absolutism you would need judges with your preferences to be selected and judges against freedom of speech (who might express such views) be restricted.
Another issue that ought to be considered is people abandoning their legitimate interests and supporting immoral and unreasonable and even lies, or not making legitimate negative critiques due to fear of coordinated slander and reputation destruction. That is being defamed. People being afraid to speak, that is to say. To be fair, "cancel culture" can include the claim of free de-association in an one sided manner. Although there is also a part of it that is about pressure and fear of losing ones job. I am not sure freedom of speech absolutism works and you have a better system, of people not being afraid if people are restrained from defaming others over nonsense. Although I am a freedom of speech absolutist when it comes to people who are telling a plausibly necessary truth and are whistleblowing.
I am for maximum freedom for people like Gareth Jones and prefer that people like Walter Duranty were fired for spreading lies. And in his time, Gareth Jones was outnumbered because he was attacked by the communists, and friendly travelers in the American establishment while the apologist for the Soviet genocides Walter Duranty won a pulitzer. People at the time lacked the nerve to share Gareth Jones truthtelling in the face of such tactics.
The problem of people who are cowardly in the face of other people using their freedom of speech to label them, as a means of shutting them up, is not something I have seen adequately addressed, by people talking about freedom of speech absolutism. Although, perhaps with less consequences for those whose speech goes against such organized groups, there might be more courage. In general, I think we need a more sophisticated model than freedom of speech absolutism that distinguishes between courageous truth telling and attempts to suppress the truth. While I acknowledge outright censorship is a key part of this, but an important component is drowning good speech, with delegitimizing it on frivolous grounds, lies, fallacies, denials, misdirections and character assassinations. Plus, using their freedom to organize and advocate for cancel culture, and directly threaten people to go along with it, or else.
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