Radical free speech is important and a cornerstone of the US. Yeah, you've got some real shitheads on voat but also a lot of decent people that just don't hold the previously approved PC opinions. The internet was way better before it began to coalesce into megacorps like google, fb, and reddit. Instead of defending free speech they caved to advertisers. The issue w/ that is someone is always pissed off by something and the smallest groups shout the loudest. Now we've got a situation that's gotten out of hand and even regular conservatives are targeted. Voat is basically a concentration camp for free speech online. They've rounded up all the "wrongthinkers" and sent them to one place.
Before reddit and that Mountain Dew (the hitler did nothing wrong naming contest) troll happened /pol/ was libertarian more or less believe it or not. The PC left is Frankenstein and Voat's their monster. Assholes were fewer and farther between online before they all got shipped to the same place.
When you start inventing shit like "micro aggressions" and telling everyone their racist nonstop... I could provide a thousand other examples. The left has even managed to bring back segregation on college campuses only this time they're called "safe spaces" and black only dorms.
The Radical Left and the Far Right are every bit as bad as each other and more alike than they are different. They both have a need to be authoritarian in order to stay in power. (Horseshoe Theory)
Reddit, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, etc. have no shortage of racists. They've just got the "right kind" in our weird double-standard culture.
I'm going to agree and disagree.
It seems true to me that, if the mainstream censors all the speech related to one end of the political spectrum, those on that end are going to congregate in the few places that still allow their speech. Since they'll be funneled into overwhelming numbers in those few platforms, they will essentially have radicalization camps. Places like /pol/ and Voat have served that function.
However, I think Horseshoe Theory is a pretty flawed idea. Both the Left and the Right are extremely complicated relationships among sets of ideas and perspectives (in their totality, of course there will be the simple-minded on both sides). Horseshoe Theory basically simplifies them down to one small subset of perspectives on which they share some common ground, and says, "See? They're the same!" It's much like saying that religious fundamentalists and militant atheists are basically the same, since they both like to talk about God(s), but most other people don't really talk about it that much.
There are a myriad of fundamental differences between the extreme Left and Right at this moment - including their ideas on equality and hierarchy, on human biodiversity, on merit, on ideal polities, on the relationship between out-groups and in-groups, on family structure, etc etc etc. Horseshoe Theory misses so much of those fundamental differences by oversimplifying the whole situation. Even where they agree - mainly on the basic acceptance of authoritarianism and identity politics - their perspectives are vastly different and highly nuanced in incompatible ways.
I think they are a lot more different than they are alike.