I'm going to say that I don't think people are actually more stupid. It just hasn't been long enough for that to be the case. I also think in reality we're more educated now in terms of people with degrees across the spectrum, but that there's also a broader spectrum of degrees than there used to be. I just think we've got the availability heuristic bias - the Internet got us in communication with WAY more people than we ever had in the 80s, and the laws of large numbers mean we're exposed to way more of the extremes than we'd expect - mostly due to not being great at intuiting statistics.
That said, I also used to be a free speech absolutist, but have changed my views. The reason is that back in the 80s, if you were spouting off hateful things, well, you were likely also aware if it was pretty far outside the overton window. Not to say there weren't large pockets of racism, sexism, bigotry of all types. However, if you're spouting conspiracy theories, you were likely *actually* in a public place, and most likely the random other people at the bar only humored you for so long. Or the local masons club or legion or whatever. You had to work to get into your own specific bubble, and it often meant physically moving. Otherwise you got pretty immediate pushback.
If you were on TV or something reaching the nation, well you were probably on the big 3, and you'd also see the other side and maybe an entire panel on many issues. You couldn't actually effectively filter out opposing views if you wanted to watch TV like a normal person.
Today, online, you're in a filter bubble that you don't even know you're in (unless you take some steps to try and get outside it, and we already talked about people expending efforts). Whatever gets you engaged is given to you again and again. It's entirely possible to just *never see* any opposing view, but more insidious is you might only see the strawman version of opposing views. On this sort of forum, if you make a rather out there claim, well, you're going to see the people who agree with you, but also anyone who disagrees with you. On X, the secret algorithm decides what you see. Same with Google, Youtube, Facebook, and on and on. They also tend to try and promote incrementally more extreme content to keep you engaged, because you always need just that little more to get the same dopamine hit from consuming the content.
People also claim X (well, it was twitter I guess back then) censorship not when something is removed, but when they decline to promote it, or the label it with something that is kind of like a "this is not something twitter feels is part of our community standards" sort of labels. Or even "this is a government agency saying this". I don't know the answer, but I do know that there is behavior most people don't want in their communities, and like it or not, X is not a public space but a commercial board - and they don't have to provide a service to anyone they don't want to. Even in public spaces you can't just call for violence or harass other people, and I feel like that was a lot of what was blocked on twitter. I don't know if you frequent 4chan or less restricted places than twitter, but if you don't - twitter only was less {insert variable here} than that because of their "censorship".
