Comment by mytailorisrich
14 days ago
There is no "freedom of speech" in the US sense in the EU/UK. That's often a cause for misunderstanding between the two sides of the Pond.
There are many things that you are not allowed to write or say by law in EU countries simply because the legislator has decided that they are wrong opinions, and it is generally accepted that the State can and should implement such controls.
Note that lying is not a crime in general. Your examples are for very specific contexts.
That's a common misconception. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees freedom of expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_R... and is legally binding in all member states. Sure, there are exceptions but in the USA too freedom of speech is not absolute either.
Moreover, in practice, there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...:
USA: 0.89 France: 0.96 Germany: 0.94 Czechia: 0.96 etc.
> there is more freedom of speech in most EU countries than in the USA
A quick look at Steam says otherwise. All the games that credit cards companies pressured to get removed from Steam, were already long gone in Germany. Because that's the level of government censorship that is completely normal in Germany.
The only reason why one might get the idea that Germany ain't so bad is because Germany doesn't do (much) Internet censorship, so we have access to the much less censored outside world. If German law would apply worldwide half the Internet would be wiped out.
Germany has a rich history, particularly in the gaming industry. Not the best example for "EU countries" since most of their censorship was blood and gore and anything related to Nazi symbolism, which was a plague of video games in the 1980s-2000s, since they were always the bad guys in video games, leading to heavy censorship in video games. In 2018, they lifted it significantly, and the list of censored or banned video games in Germany is relatively short.
Including things like "media bias" and other dubious criteria in freedom of speech rankings is obviously skewed.
Whatever the ECHR might say what I wrote in my previous comment is factual. In Europe "freedom of speech" comes with a long list of small print.
In fact, this is so embedded that the article of the ECHR you quote provides for restrictions and even states that they are "necessary": "subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"." QED
The distinction is academical. As I wrote, freedom of speech is not absolute in the USA either, think copyright law or gag orders etc. And arguing about this day after Colbert's show is cancelled...
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Yeah, what trump did, spreading lies, hate and falsely accusing wouldn't work in the EU.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of stupidity
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It may do so in some of their written papers, but in practice I risk going to prison if I dare say some things. Soon enough it will be illegal for me, the grandkid of a devout communist party member, to say that I agree with what my grandad believed in, it is already illegal to do that in the Czech Republic.
There is no freedom of speech in the "US sense" in the US either.
Just because a bunch of noisy people shout about freedom all day long doesn't mean they are not talking absolute garbage.