There is a tendency for some US commentators to totally ignore the European attitude around freedom of speech and to talk about the slippery slope to totalitarian states.
Sometimes those people will mix up "first ammendment" rights with what a website owner is allowed to do; or they appear to be unaware of the very many cases of people in America who lose their jobs or are arrested because they wear the wrong t-shirt or have an innocent poster on their door.
We often hear these people when there's coverage of twitter trolls going to court. They'll say that it's ridiculous to prosecute people for being mean on twitter. This is intensely frustrating because -and this should be fucking obvious- no-one is arrested for being a bit mean on social media. People are arrested for making credible repeated threats of violence. But that happens in the US.
>or they appear to be unaware of the very many cases of people in America who lose their jobs or are arrested because they wear the wrong t-shirt or have an innocent poster on their door.
Arrested and convicted of a crime are two different things. Do you have any evidence of that happening? I know of a Virginia teenager who was arrested last year because he wouldn't take off an NRA shirt, but first, he wasn't arrested for the shirt, he was arrested for obstruction, and second, charges were dropped.
As for European attitudes toward free speech, I don't say they're wrong for Europeans, I just think some of them are daft, like locking people up for racist remarks or offensive speech. That just turns harmless idiots into martyrs.
Sometimes those people will mix up "first ammendment" rights with what a website owner is allowed to do; or they appear to be unaware of the very many cases of people in America who lose their jobs or are arrested because they wear the wrong t-shirt or have an innocent poster on their door.
We often hear these people when there's coverage of twitter trolls going to court. They'll say that it's ridiculous to prosecute people for being mean on twitter. This is intensely frustrating because -and this should be fucking obvious- no-one is arrested for being a bit mean on social media. People are arrested for making credible repeated threats of violence. But that happens in the US.