I have found that suppressing something generally causes more harm than good, especially when you're talking about opinions.
I used to agree with this completely, but I think the basic design of all the popular forms of social media (and news reporting in much of the world) means that we've entered a situation where opinions/ideas basically either are only amplified or suppressed (or people see it that way, and I can't say they're entirely wrong), and it seems like the amplification of certain ideas, rather than exposing them to sunlight and causing them to fall apart, just makes them reach more vulnerable/susceptible people where those ideas thrive. It seems like the major issue here is maybe the amplification, which didn't really happen in the same way pre-social-media, but virtually all social media was designed to cause (and indeed only in very recent years has any attempt been made to stop this - e.g. YouTube and Facebook recently changing algorithms to no longer push people hard to more extreme material - this was fascinatingly noticeable with my YouTube recommends). Forums don't cause the same amplification, I note, because they don't make decisions on what to show people based on votes etc., and don't try and "increase engagement".
(With news, there have always been attempts to "increase engagement" and so on, but first the 24-hour-news-cycle, and then the proliferation of free "news" on the internet, together with the reliance of an ad-supported model has made it much worse (at least one paywalled UK newspaper shows the "increase engagement" issue can happen without advertising propelling it though)).
Never in my entire life, out in the real world, have I ever heard someone make a racist comment and not get immediately blasted for it - on the rare occasion that it has ever happened in my presence. Anecdote, but, still.
This is an interesting claim. I'd wonder how old you are, what circles you move in, and so on. Because at 43, despite being from relatively liberal/left circles, I've absolutely heard people make racist comments and not get "blasted" (as in severely criticized), and not just white people either. There are certain kinds of racist comment that just aren't likely to fly with
anyone in public, but there other kinds of racial stereotyping, particularly, and what I might call "racial sneering", which I've absolutely seen people get away with - and to continue to get away with today. And whilst there may be backlash from some of this when its in public, it's not sufficient to create actual consequences in most cases (c.f. most "cancelled" people getting a louder voice post "cancellation").