Comment by Romario77
9 hours ago
nowhere near to China.
In US almost anything could be discussed - usually only unlawful things are censored by government.
Private entities might have their own policies, but government censorship is fairly small.
9 hours ago
nowhere near to China.
In US almost anything could be discussed - usually only unlawful things are censored by government.
Private entities might have their own policies, but government censorship is fairly small.
In the US, yes, by the law, in principle.
In practice, you will have loss of clients, of investors, of opportunities (banned from Play Store, etc).
In Europe, on top of that, you will get fines, loss of freedom, etc.
Others responding to my speech by exercising their own rights to free speech and free association as individuals does not violate my right to free speech. One can make an argument that corporations doing those things (e.g. your Play Store example) is sufficiently different in kind to individuals doing it -- and a lot of people would even agree with that argument! It does, however, run afoul of current first amendment jurisprudence.
Either way, this is categorically different from China's policies on e.g. Tibet, which is a centrally driven censorship decision whose goal is to suppress factual information.
> Either way, this is categorically different from China's policies on e.g. Tibet, which is a centrally driven censorship decision whose goal is to suppress factual information.
You'll quickly run into issues and accusations of being a troll in the "free world" if you bring up inconvenient factual information on Tibet. The Dalai Lama asking a young boy to suck on his tongue for example.
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I see you trying to equalize the arugment, but it sounds like you are conflating rules, regulations and rights versus actual censorship.
Generally the West, besides recent Trump admins, we aren't censored about talking about things. The right-leaning folks will talk about how they're getting cancelled, while cancelling journalists.
China has history thats not allowed to be taught or learned from. In America, we just sweep it under an already lumpy rug.
- Genocide of Native americans in Florida and resulting "Manifest Destiny" genocide on aboriginals people - Slavery, and arguably the American South was entirely depedant on slave labour - Internment camp for Japanses families during the second world war - Students protesters shot and killed at Kent State by National Guards
> In Europe, on top of that, you will get fines, loss of freedom, etc.
What are you talking about?
I had prepared a long post for you, but at the end I prefer not to take the risk.
You may believe or not believe that such exist, but EU is more restrictive. Keep in mind that US is a very rare animal where freedom of speech is incredibly high compared to other countries.
The best link I can point you to without taking risk: https://www.cima.ned.org/publication/chilling-legislation/
one thing comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial
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This assumes zero unknown unknowns, as in things that would be kept from your awareness through processes also kept from your awareness.
This might be a good year to revisit this assumption.
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>Private entities might have their own policies, but government censorship is fairly small.
It's a distinction without a difference when these "private" entities in the West are the actual power centers. Most regular people spend their waking days at work having to follow the rules of these entities, and these entities provide the basic necessities of life. What would happen if you got banned from all the grocery stores? Put on an unemployable list for having controversial outspoken opinions?
A man was just shot in the street by the US government for filming them, while he happened to be carrying a legally owned gun. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/man-shot-and-killed-by-f...
Earlier they broke down the door of a US citizen and arrested him in his underwear without a warrant. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-u-s-citizen-says-ice-f...
Stephen Colbert has been fired for being critical of the president, after pressure from the federal government threatening to stop a merger. https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/ste...
CBS News installed a new editor-in-chief following the above merge and lawsuit related settlement, and she has pulled segments from 60 Minutes which were critical of the administration: https://www.npr.org/2025/12/22/g-s1-103282/cbs-chief-bari-we... (the segment leaked via a foreign affiliate, and later was broadcast by CBS)
Students have been arrested for writing op-eds critical of Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%...
TikTok has been forced to sell to an ally of the current administration, who is now alleged to be censoring information critical of ICE (this last one is as of yet unproven, but the fact is they were forced to sell to someone politically aligned with the president, which doesn't say very good things about freedom of expression): https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a70144099/tiktok-ice-c...
Apple and Google have banned apps tracking ICE from their app stores, upon demand from the government: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/03/nx-s1-5561999/apple-google-ic...
And the government is planning on requiring ESTA visitors to install a mobile app, submit biometric data, and submit 5 years of social media data to travel to the US: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-12-10/pdf/2025-2...
We no longer have a functioning bill of rights in this country. Have you been asleep for the past year?
The censorship is not as pervasive as in China, yet. But it's getting there fast.
Oh yes it is. Anything sexual is heavily censored in the west. In particular the US.
Funnily enough, in Europe it's the opposite: news, facts and opinions tend to be censored but porn is wide open (as long as you give your ID card)
Did we all forget about the censorship around "misinformation" during COVID and "stolen elections" already?