Consider hate speech. There is a clear short-term benefit of moderation: reducing the harms to marginalised people from being exposed to threats to their person, identity, and way of life. In the face of this benefit, the absolute free speech advocate must provide a counter-argument for why free speech overrides that harm-reduction.
>In the face of this benefit, the absolute free speech advocate must provide a counter-argument for why free speech overrides that harm-reduction.
Why are you not the one who must provide an argument for why this "reduction of harm" overrides the benefit of freedom of speech?
Further, a very large fraction of what I have seen classified as "hate speech" simply cannot reasonably be argued to constitute any kind of threat.
Finally: what do you mean by "identity"? When I have seen this term used by opponents of "hate speech", it generally seems to refer to something like a person's self-image. I cannot understand how this can in principle be "threatened", nor how it could constitute harm to learn that someone else sees you differently from how you see yourself.
> why this "reduction of harm" overrides the benefit of freedom of speech
There are some strong arguments for harm reduction being a more fundamental human value than freedom of speech.
Firstly, the modern conception of freedom of speech is often seen to be grounded in libertarian thought, in particular the works of Bentham and Mill. Yet Mill himself explicitly stated that these freedoms should be limited in the case where they cause harm to others. Thus freedom of speech has historically been seen as lower priority to harm reduction.
Secondly, there are in fact two competing interpretations for "freedom of speech": on one hand the equality of access to a public forum, on the other hand the ability to say whatever you want. I say "competing" because in a public forum without moderation, the tendency is for loud and offensive voices to drown out the discourse, effectively leaving marginalised people without a voice. This is especially potent in modern social media. To me it is similar to antitrust regulations in the market: we put these in place for the benefit of competition, as this typically improve social impacts. However in doing so we are limiting the freedom of corporations with large market share to collude, fix prices etc... .
Thirdly, history suggests that it's problematic for ideological values to trump the basic tenet of harm reduction. We see this for example in the Catholic church's refusal to support abortion rights or the use of condoms to prevent AIDs. If we don't ultimately assess the long-term social impact of a "core moral value" in terms of human harm and flourishing, then we risk entrapping ourselves in an ideological morass.
> what do you mean by "identity"? ... I cannot understand how this can in principle be "threatened"
As an example, homophobic comments are an attack on the sexual identity of homosexual people. It sends a message that they are unacceptable to society due to their inherent preferences, and that they should not express themselves as they naturally wish to. This causes psychological suffering.
>reducing the harms to marginalised people from being exposed to threats to their person, identity, and way of life
This only makes sense if you use a recent definition of "harm" created by censorship advocates that's divorced from the traditional meaning. In criminal law, harm traditionally (and still does in America) mean actually physically harming someone's body or making threats to do so. Censorship advocates are the ones making the claim that mere words should also constitute harm, so the onus is on them to justify why they want to change the meaning of the word like that.
Consider hate speech. There is a clear short-term benefit of moderation: reducing the harms to marginalised people from being exposed to threats to their person, identity, and way of life. In the face of this benefit, the absolute free speech advocate must provide a counter-argument for why free speech overrides that harm-reduction.