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A way to improve it further is to see freedom of speech as quantitative, try to maximise it for all parties involved, and look at the consequences of banning a certain discourse or not.
Using hate speech as an example:
So by banning hate speech you're actually increasing the overall freedom of speech, even if reducing it a bit for a certain audience.
The same reasoning applies towards other situations. Like "that fucking user" doing the online equivalent of megaphoning so nobody else is heard; misplaced porn, gore, or other things that a lot of people would rather not see; harassment (it is performative speech, and yet you need to prevent it).
I feel like this covers what you've linked about freedom of expression in Canada, but it's a bit more practical and flexible to adapt into online communities.
Also, it's important to take into account that there's a hierarchy between discourses, when trying to maximise freedom of speech: descriptive > prescriptive > performative.
I disagree that this is lowering free speech. Those people who leave are still entirely within their ability to stay and continue speaking. Free speech isn't lesser just because someone doesn't feel like speaking
The problem with this reasoning is that it could be used to justify banning any speech (not just hate speech) and still claim "we're banning it but ackshyually we aren't reducing your free speech. You're still able to say it, it's just that you don't like the consequences of saying it here." Because even people under the worst dictatorships out there are still able to voice censored discourses.
Instead of looking at the ability of the individuals, IMO it's better to look at the effects in the social environment. Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.
This might sound like abstract "WORDS WORDS WORDS", but IMO it has a bunch of desirable consequences:
This is where I don't agree. Hate speech doesn't make anyone leave. It has no power nor authority over people to make them do anything. No matter how much someone spams "kill all niggers", it doesn't actually do anything. If someone leaves, it's entirely because they aren't personally interested in being there. This is in contrast to censorship from the platform, where there is the ability to unilaterally force a user to not participate via bans or removals.
It's the same idea as how free speech applies to the government not censoring the town square. Someone leaving because they don't enjoy what people say is not an infringement on anyone's speech, but the government arresting people based on what they say is.
Just not censoring people offers nearly all the benefits you claim your perspective offers.you don't have to worry about misuse of censorship because it isn't used at all, and it is entirely devoid of "feeling" and "intent", and the other things like ability to an undesirable speech isn't particularly relevant when discussing a free speech platform.
You're moving the goalposts from "it doesn't hamper your ability" to "people don't leave", Reddit style. And you still placed the goalposts where you won't score.
If you want to know how stupid your claim (that boils down to "I dun unrurrstand! Speach don't do nothing!") sounds like, you don't need even:
No, you don't need those things. A tiny bit of reasoning should be enough to show that, if you shit constantly on the groups that a person belongs to, the person will eventually leave or shut up.
Speech has power over people, regardless of authority, no matter how much you pretend that it doesn't - it makes people do things, it makes people not do things. This is fucking obvious for anyone with a functional brain dammit.
If you want to continue this conversation, then show a bit more depth of thought than you're doing currently. Otherwise, I won't waste my time further, OK?