Regarding Steven Crowder's former employee being silenced and the hashtag #freespeechmatters being used for it, Ethan said the following:

"Free speech matters? Is this a free speech thing? I don't know. Somehow it always turns into a free speech thing... It's got nothing to do with free speech."
Off The Rails #110

We thought adequate pushback was offered, but there was no mention of what seemed like the most obvious thing to us, which is Ethan himself continuously making fair use out to be free speech, even less than a week ago:

"I've literally proven in courts here, made a legal precedent, it's in the fucking... on copyright.gov, that reaction videos are free speech."
SYNT #64 (Members-only)

One could consider fair use to be a form of free speech or freedom of expression in that people are free to speak and express themselves using copyrighted works in a fair manner, but it's not actually the same, nor did Ethan prove that in court. The court's verdict in the case, Hosseinzadeh v. Klein et al (16-cv-3081), didn't consider free speech or even contain the word "speech" whatsoever. On top of that, Ethan clarified:

"Free speech is: the government shall not..."
Off The Rails #110

This interpretation removes any and all ambiguity, making "free speech" exclusive to how it's laid out in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Fair use is protected by the U.S. Code's Copyright Law (Title 17) instead. If someone considers fair use to be free speech, then the right to speak out against unlawful NDAs must absolutely be considered free speech too.

"Conservatives overuse this free speech thing so much that it's like completely lost any of its original meaning."
Off The Rails #110

That, we very much agree with, but this is the one time that shouldn't apply, with it completely invalidating Ethan's very own use of the term as well.