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Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

If you oppose it, I can certainly and very safely label you as somebody who doesn't know anything about Germany and its current laws, including the display of the swastika symbol and other nazi-related hate symbols and propaganda.

Europe is not the US, which I'm guessing you're from. We have a different culture around free speech, here. And tell you what, it's actually worked out really nicely for us, and most of Europe as a whole is higher than the USA on a variety of freedom indices.

We're not perfect, but the absolute free speech stuff you folks have over there is only good on paper. In practice, it's not absolute, and it has led to more issues there than here.

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Hello, I oppose it. I live right next to germany, i know quite a bit about it. The 'Z' is not banned here. Neither is russian media. Unlike in germany where RT is DNS censored now.

And I think the US free speech model is vastly superior.

Your opinion is not universally held by europeans, i just wanted to make that clear.

And no I don't support the war, nor do I like putin in the slightest, just to make that also clear.

Never said it was universally held. Nothing is. I know european flat earthers, even. But do you disagree that it's by far the majority opinion and trend here?

BTW. If RT weren't DNS censored, all you would get is a 403. RT is now excluding most countries all on its own.

> But do you disagree that it's by far the majority opinion and trend here?

I can't speak for all of europe. I do get these vibes from germany.

I switzerland I feel like most are somewhere between the US and germany, where they'd agree with a nazi flag ban but not an RT ban.

So no, it depends on the definition of "here".

You were the one that brought up the RT ban. I was talking about symbolism displays.

Z isn't banned here and I don't see any big calls to do so. Answer remains the same. Discussion was about freedom of speech and thus the RT ban is also relevant.

For what it's worth, in Denmark www.rt.com resolves to 91.215.41.10 and seems to work correctly.

https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores

This site is unreadable on mobile. Everything in the table has a huge font.

Reporters without Borders ranks the US behind quite a lot of European countries: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangliste_der_Pressefreiheit (German Wikipedia because the English article ironically doesn't include data)

"Freedom of Expression and Belief": US, 3/4. Germany, 4/4. Report invalidated.

You have misread the report. In actuality the results are 14 out 16 points for both .us and .de in that category.

Looking at the page I can easily identify political opinion of the authors and detect view points of who should be given freedom of speech and who shouldn't. Thankfully they do link in small print to the methodology, which explain that the views are that of the Freedom House staff. They do consult others which is a major plus, but in the end its the staff that make a decision about what freedom is, who should get it, and who shouldn't. The biggest criticism I would give the site is the lack of any critical assessment of contested topics where different social scientists has different conclusions.

I give the site a score of 7/10.

Unfortunately, you have a regime of approved speech under duress. A "culture of free speech" is far different, mainly, participation is voluntary without your person threatened under arrest from a government, but still using said human right in an acceptable manner to advance mankind.

And again, I dislike having to define these things; eventually someone will ad-hominum me saying I support a cause I clearly do not.

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