I believe the community makes a website "Like the Wild West" not the features (Rant incoming)

(tl;dr at the bottom)

I will make this clear, I don't know how German laws work so and I will be touching on hate speech, but for the sake of getting out what I think I will speak as if Germany has no hate speech laws. I understand that if there is I am at risk of being banned but at this point I kinda don't care as users are making this place no different from big tech.

So, I see people praising this site as bringing back "The Wild West days of the internet" but honestly, I don't see it. Yeah we can actually express ourselves uniquely with CSS, yeah this website does nothing shady like data collecting and and shoving content they want us to consume down our throats, but that isn't the reason why back in the day the internet was "The Wild West" It was the people on the internet. It was the lack of moderation or rather a more hands off type of moderation. People said and did whatever they wanted with little to no consequences which admittedly is a double edged sword. On one hand, you can be yourself and not be shamed or banned for it, on the other hand, you would have to tolerate people openly talking about some pretty awful things. But I think that's more fair, it sounds better doesn't it? Would you rather go to a site to freely express yourself and the worse you'll deal with is harassment you can block and ignore, or would you go to a site where even a hint of your personal beliefs and life views will get you permanently banned because someone who disagrees with you reported you for hate speech?

Okay now to touch on the drama I have been seeing. Like before, I have no idea what went on, all I have to go by are people in blogs saying "I am leaving because of this" and "This site shouldn't tolerate you if you believe in these things" I want to talk about the latter here. My problem with big tech is they push the message there is a right opinion and there is a wrong opinion, and I would hope most people don't agree with that, excluding the few very immoral opinions of course. But since I keep seeing people promote that way of thinking, is this place supposed to be different from big tech? Cause in my opinion it's not looking that way. The problem I am having with these blog posts is that these people aren't saying "This guy is being breaking the rules" "This guy is harassing people and evading bans" They're saying "This guy has this on his profile" "This guy said this in one of his comments and we shouldn't tolerate him here" I know it's crazy, but you're not a perfect human being and people aren't evil because they don't have the same mindset as you. People are unique individuals and that's why people miss "The Wild West" days of the internet. You got to hear multiple view points and meet all kinds of people. Since there were very little rules people could express their thoughts more clearly. People can have all kinds of reasons for having the same opinion and in my opinion, all of you mass reporting people for being different sounds no different at all from the 'bigots' people whine about being intolerant.

tl;dr:

I really miss old internet, I really do but I feel like most people here only miss the features, but I miss the people. People keep promoting the idea you're an awful and horrible person if you don't think and act like them. This is the opposite of old school communities, back then everyone tolerated each other. You would log in having no idea what outlandish stuff that one guy might say today, or what laughable posts that one hateful guy might say, then you get with your good buddies and talk about the crazy stuff the trolls have been up to. This is what made the internet "The Wild West"