Is there is any place where many people meet that can be truly free? In the sense that I can say what I want without encountering resistance?

It is a matter of interpretation how much one takes disagreement as a personal affront or in a way trains oneself to try one's composure by this challenge. Agreement = affirmation of one's own. Conversation = The willingness to listen even to opposing or challenging arguments and verbal attacks. Ad hominem attacks are the most catchy and therefore the master attacks. They may not really be permissible, but you see them everywhere and with far greater frequency and intensity on all so-called social media channels. Banning them only brings out more of them. The art is to let the force bounce off you and if it doesn't (which is most of the time it doesn't), seek to fathom what it is that annoys you so terribly.
I think it is thoroughly exaggerated that hate speech is seen as abhorred, in fact I think it is very popular (thanks to widespread media distribution). To believe that only approval is a positive thing is deluding oneself. ...Every collective thrives on tests of endurance. If it does not pass them, it can disintegrate or become lifeless. Hate is only a hair's breadth away from love.

So I don't so radically agree with you that dictators are at work. Rather, I think most of the potential for conflict online is incompetence or unawareness/ignorance, rapid aggrievement, as well as a rapid weariness of all that is believed to be something honourable or noble. I call it the tension field in which boredom and excitement confront each other and one swings between these two moods as if attached to a hook.

Right now I'm experiencing a contradiction with your comment to me. I'm not a bot, right, so an automated response to your commenters talking to each other I find rather irritating. Are you interested in a conversation? With me? If so, I prefer a personal reply. Though I assume that longer conversations with me is not so much to your taste. LOL ;)