2 ms·

this is false, numerous EU countries have a similar rights, de juro or de facto. Exceptions and laws against hate speech do tend to be stronger. The fact that

by dtech 6y ago

this is false, numerous EU countries have a similar rights, de juro or de facto. Exceptions and laws against hate speech do tend to be stronger. The fact that you're making such a statement about "the EU" shows how misleading or ignorant you're being, since this is not governed by EU law for the most part. I'd argue that most EU countries have stronger de facto rights, since peaceful protests in the capital don't tend to get beaten into submission like what happened in the Washington last june.

viklove 6y ago
I think you might want to read about this: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/police-tear-gas-yellow-vest-protests-paris-200118175445728.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/police-tear-gas-yello...
astura 6y ago
What Europe considers "free speech" isn't the same as what America considers "free speech." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-03-19/free-speech-in-europe-isn-t-what-americans-think https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-03-19/free-s... >On free speech, the U.S. and Europe have also gone different ways. The German minister of justice threatened Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc.’s Google search back in December, telling them they needed to move faster and better to remove hateful posts that violate German law. Now the minister is proposing a new law in fulfillment of the threat. >To Americans, the idea of the government forcing social media to censor posts may seem to resemble China’s internet censorship. Such legislation wouldn’t just be unconstitutional; it would be almost unthinkable. Facebook and Twitter are private actors who could censor voluntarily under the Constitution -- indeed, their voluntary censorship would itself be protected speech. >But the government can’t order private censorship any more than it can censor directly. That’s because U.S. constitutional tradition treats hate speech as the advocacy of racist or sexist ideas. They may be repellent, but because they count as ideas, they get full First Amendment protection.
- dtech 6y ago
  You're missing the entire point. Germany has much less free speech yes, but it's an outlier (comes from post-WW2 laws preventing nazi speech and continued). Other EU countries have much, much less restrictions, some countries come close to the (extreme for the western world) free speech standards US has in law. Europe and the EU are much more heterogeneous than the US. Making comparison on national laws for the EU with US is not even falsifiable, you can usually find countries on both sides. This does not apply to EU law like GDPR of course.

by dtech 6y ago

viklove 6y ago

I think you might want to read about this: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/police-tear-gas-yellow-vest-protests-paris-200118175445728.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/police-tear-gas-yello...

astura 6y ago

What Europe considers "free speech" isn't the same as what America considers "free speech." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-03-19/free-speech-in-europe-isn-t-what-americans-think https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-03-19/free-s... >On free speech, the U.S. and Europe have also gone different ways. The German minister of justice threatened Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc.’s Google search back in December, telling them they needed to move faster and better to remove hateful posts that violate German law. Now the minister is proposing a new law in fulfillment of the threat. >To Americans, the idea of the government forcing social media to censor posts may seem to resemble China’s internet censorship. Such legislation wouldn’t just be unconstitutional; it would be almost unthinkable. Facebook and Twitter are private actors who could censor voluntarily under the Constitution -- indeed, their voluntary censorship would itself be protected speech. >But the government can’t order private censorship any more than it can censor directly. That’s because U.S. constitutional tradition treats hate speech as the advocacy of racist or sexist ideas. They may be repellent, but because they count as ideas, they get full First Amendment protection.

dtech 6y ago
You're missing the entire point. Germany has much less free speech yes, but it's an outlier (comes from post-WW2 laws preventing nazi speech and continued). Other EU countries have much, much less restrictions, some countries come close to the (extreme for the western world) free speech standards US has in law. Europe and the EU are much more heterogeneous than the US. Making comparison on national laws for the EU with US is not even falsifiable, you can usually find countries on both sides. This does not apply to EU law like GDPR of course.