"...we should start normalizing voting speech that we don't agree with..."
If we want more traffic, we should do that, as well as speech we're indifferent to. I do encourage speech to encourage traffic by encouraging user retention. I also do it because I like speech I agree with, but only rarely to encourage dissent I do not agree with. Mostly if I upvote speech I disagree with it's because I have the purpose of encouraging user retention.
Edit: upon reflection, I guess it's not that rare I upvote speech I disagree with, because I feel obligated to upvote folks I engage with, and I usually upvote people when I do express disagreement with them regarding reason, and not objectionable behaviour.
IF we claim to support free speech, but don't actually give support to the authors, do we really support free speech. or do we just tolerate it?
Not that tolerating isn't good enough, it's better than flagging people off the platform for words, but is it really support?
'We'...
There are diverse people with diverse opinions. Each of us supports speech we like, and if we don't suppress speech we don't like, people that like that speech will support it.
That's how 'we' support free speech in practice.