What the heck is this supposed to mean? What, I suppose that if people in China wanted democracy they could just go and get it? Oh wait, not really, they get silenced, arrested, and massacred... Is there even a place on Earth where a democratic transition was achieved not by force against the holders of power?
Taking power from a non-democratic leadership is incredibly difficult, risky and almost always violent. And non-democratic leadership very rarely self-democratize. Unfortunately, we don't know if much of the world wants democracy as it's aggressively stamped out in many places and illegal to pursue it.
While I agree with you, that it’s difficult, sometimes bloody, and elites almost never give up power voluntarily (isn’t that true even in democracies though?), one can see that it can be done.
Even in “speech,” there is a matter of quality — quality that has been taken for granted in much of the “free” world. It is this quality that is the responsibility of speech.
Now, on topic, another comment on this thread points out quite well that some of our social media platforms are not designed for quality. They were designed to be viral.
I agree with you on the short-comings of social media though, with their algorithms designed to push up the things that make people out-raged (those that go viral the fastest) and enable people to deepen and solidify their beliefs with very narrow curated feeds. These have led to hate crimes all over the world. There is definitely a dangerous element to them that people who harp on about 'free-speech' seem to want to sneer at.
The fact is, those countries where people "just don't care" happen to be countries that violently suppress opposition. The opposition does not necessary want fairness and freedom, but they want participation on power.
There is always mechanism for fighting out power and ideas - prison or election.
And if most poor people didn't want to be poor, they would have chosen to be rich. And if most homeless people wanted to live in homes, they would have chosen it.