How on earth can you think this is less democratic? It is by far more democratic. Twitter under previous leadership was on a banning, censoring, rampage against anything that didn’t agree with their own narrative.
Less democracy means less people are in control of the decisions, that is precisely what has happened.
If Elon sticks to the ideals he has espoused and open sourced more of the algorithms and policies of Twitter, that is possibly an improvement.
As an example from governments: The Chinese legislator is ruled by the communist party. The National People’s Congress has almost 3000 representatives. Even though there are almost 10x more representatives then in the USA legislator (which is still more then double per capita), this doesn’t mean the China’s legislator is more democratic then the USA’s legislator. Far from it. Now if Xi Jinping would dismantle the Congress and assume dictatorial powers (like Caesar crossing the Rubicon) this would just move China from being a totalitarian republic to a dictatorship (again like Ancient Rome after the civil wars), at no point in this affair does the common population in China have any say in the laws that govern them (not even by proxy, as is the case in the USA; but by proxy of a proxy of a proxy etc. effectively thinning out any democratic say to nothing).
One mechanism of accomplishing that would be to restrict people who are using communication platforms to violate democratic norms.
I'm not advocating that is the best way to accomplish protecting democracy. I'm just pointing out that "free speech maximalism" doesn't address the need to protect democracy.
People can respect you as a person, but no I don't think people have to respect different viewpoints. I can respect that you have a lived experience that differs from mine and that your viewpoint is X, but I do balance that against my own views and speak my own truth as well.
If you think that you have to respect every viewpoint that differs, think of the viewpoints of the party you dislike. Think of any of their views. Do you respect their _view_ or do you respect the person and want to allow their speech while disagreeing with it?
Me? I think the best way to deal with speech I don't like is not filtering or censorship its more speech. Anytime I see an implication that someones view needs to be filtered I think "You first."