I think in the opposit we should urge US companies to fight against GDPR. Local foreign laws shouldn’t dictate how our companies should behave. Why not respecting speech laws in China or in Russia if we follow this precedent?
Facebook isn't only a US company. Facebook Ltd is a UK company and they have many more companies around the world.
If you want to operate in UK and generate revenues there then Facebook Ltd must follow UK laws.
That's not true. Read the 23rd point right at the top: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
Here's the part of it that covers your webserver: "Whereas the mere accessibility of the controller's, processor's or an intermediary's website in the Union, of an email address or of other contact details, or the use of a language generally used in the third country where the controller is established, is insufficient to ascertain such intention, [...]".
> envisage d'offrir des services à des personnes concernées dans un ou plusieurs États membres de l'Union
They just have to prove you are considering EU in your app. It can be anything. Like Having EU timezones, or a country input with EU countries is enough to prove intent to server EU residents. If you collect IPs via your web sever, you are infringing.
Given that it's still April, there's literally no way for you to know that. Also, the sentence you're quoting starts with "may make it apparent" not "does make it apparent".
Having said that, if you're building a service that let's people select EU timezones, countries, currencies and so on you're probably going to have a hard time proving that you're not providing goods or services to Europeans (because you probably are). If you're providing goods or services to Europeans GDPR applies.
Under the US interpretation of free speech political donations are protected as "speech" and politicians can go on TV and say they want someone to be murdered and not face any consequences.
I'm German so you can imagine why I fundamentally disagree with that notion, even if our laws are sometimes a bit too strict (though that often has more to do with post-WW2 denazification than free speech in particular -- e.g. not being allowed to put nazi symbology in video games, not even as enemies).
UK libel laws and their advertising code are another example of European laws being a bit too strict. But even that is something I'd prefer over the "law of the strongest" in the US.
EDIT: Free speech is obviously a great idea and an important right, but the problem with freedoms and rights is that they can't be absolutes when you live in a society with other people you want to share those rights and freedoms ("your liberty to swing your fist ends where my nose begins"). Additionally some of those freedoms and rights are mutually exclusive so you need to define an order of precedence. Even free speech absolutists generally draw the line somewhere (e.g. generally violence isn't considered speech even if it is a form of expression and few people would defend the right to shout "fire" in a crowded building and not facing the consequences of the resulting mayhem).
In other words "being willing to defend free speech" is a meaningless platitude unless you first define what you consider the acceptable limits of that freedom.
*Terms and conditions may apply.
The First Amendment protects you from the government. Facebook censoring you is not prohibited by the First Amendment. More broadly, I don’t see how GDPR interferes with one’s right to lawful political speech.
But I still don't see the connection with the first amendment.
Edit: come to think of it I'm not even sure it protects them, but again, it certainly doesn't require them to store or transmit anything.
Though I think you're right that they would fight it. It's one thing to have your competitors voluntarily adopt a privacy policy that makes them less profitable, but it's another matter if users flock to them and end up eroding the profit margins of the whole privacy violation industry.