Ive seen that said a lot, but the issue Ive long had with it is, people that bring up “freedom of speech” are not always referring to the legal concept that garuntees it, be that the first amendment or some equivalent thing from outside the US. They might be, but they might also be using the term to express a philosophical or ideological position that they believe people ought to be able to say anything without negative consequences, which the person bringing it up can still hold without necessarily believing the law agrees.

Now, there’s a lot of problems one can point out with that kind of position, I have a few objections myself, paradox of tolerance and all that, but if someone objects that a given action is “against free speech”, and the response is “this isnt illegal that law doesn’t work that way”, that response isn’t actually bringing up one of those problems. The result is that, if the “free speech guy” didn’t happen to literally be under the impression that a crime was just committed and was instead expressing that they believe that it is unethical to prevent them from saying whatever they feel like via any medium they feel like, both people involved are simply talking past one another, possibly in increasing frustration that the other person seemingly just won’t get what they are saying.