This is a semantic problem. I say 'We used our self-moderation tools to shut the door on a troll and ignore him. We ignored him and he went away.' You say 'We didn't ignore him, we reacted to offensive things and took steps to minimize our contact with offensive things which is not ignoring him.' Freedom of speech lets you knock on someones door and say 'I want to talk about these things, this is what I believe about these things.' It protects a person from being violently assaulted or imprisoned for speaking. It doesn't protect them from someone closing the door. Refusing to engage, making it impossible for the troll in question to engage is the functional equivalent of ignoring it. I can't say who the 'right' targets are for violence. But I can say in the affirmative that giving Milo Yiannopoulos of all people the moral high ground is asking for more trouble. Engaging with him in any manner is asking for more trouble.
Definitely, 100%, demonstrably not a semantic argument. Semantics didn't suddenly make those features appear. Many requests, fights between users, and then some hard coding work by several dedicated people working for free brought them to you. It was and remains a very active process.
I am saying that there is no practical difference between hush/mute/filtering someone and just outright ignoring them. It's lovely that we have tools in place to allow people to decide who is and isn't allowed to participate in their discussions. But there's not much difference in my mind between that, and saying 'I will not be paying any attention to what you are trying to say, bye.' I'm not denigrating the hard work put into the site.
Actually, what I'm saying is that we took steps that prevented not just us, but other people from seeing his content, specifically. That's the difference.You say 'We didn't ignore him, we reacted to offensive things and took steps to minimize our contact with offensive things which is not ignoring him.'