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Comment by mtw | Hacker News Reader

In France, freedom of speech is limited for terrorism, hate speech, hating religions e.g. For example, encouraging racism, lauding Hitler or ISIS, or extreme versions of islam or christianism which limit women's rights etc.

The only difference with US or Canada is that religion extremism is more "tolerated" in those countries, but that is NOT an issue for startups. Unless you're doing a religion startup??!?

The real issue for startups going to France is not freedom of speech. It's red tape, lack of practicality, a bit more corruption (compared to Canada or New Zealand), and the lack of openness from the general population towards capitalism and innovation.

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That is clearly not the only difference.

There is a vast amount of what would be considered incendiary or illegal discussion in France, that occurs on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and dozens of other US platforms.

Those types of services, Google included, are gateways & amplifiers that enable a much larger ecosystem for tech start-ups. Censorship drives or keeps them away, which is one of the reasons why the US will perpetually dominate such in the West.

The latest anti free speech movement taking over Europe, is the "fake news" authoritarianism. Having bureaucrats decide what is legally to be considered news; aka an excuse for increasing government censorship. Major European nations are moving aggressively to strictly limit such. Should Breitbart be covered by freedom of speech? I think it's obvious that they should. In Germany or France it would not be, they'd immediately seek to destroy them.

Facebook is a $369 billion tech behemoth that could never exist anywhere but the US. It's probably worth more than every public technology company in all of the EU combined.

Could you expand on corruption? I am keenly aware of its existence in the construction sector there, but do you any other examples?

>In France, freedom of speech is limited for terrorism, hate speech, hating religions e.g. For example, encouraging racism, lauding Hitler or ISIS, or extreme versions of islam or christianism which limit women's rights etc.

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