I find some of the discussion around 'autocracy' or free debate a little misplaced in this context. When we are discussing a free press, the operation of an electoral system or any discourse that is publically owned, we are quite right to expect total freedom of speech (with all of the good and bad things that leads to). However, this forum is not a voting system or a presidential debate. It is a private place to which others are invited, rather like being asked into someone's private home. Would we stand up, puff out or chests, and demand our right to say whatever we want in a private house? Or would we recognise that we have been invited into someone's space, communicate respectfully and recognise the house owner's right to ask us to leave whenever they feel like it? That is not the act of an autocrat because we have no right to be in someone else's house. We are there by invitation. We can, of course, leave and that is our total right. That's as far as it goes. So that doesn't make the owner a dictator or a bully - it just means they are making their house the sort of place they want it to be, and we can share in it (if we choose to) as long as the owners keep wanting us there.
That's how I see it anyway...
