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Free speech is an interesting topic, it's not an absolute good and the full version is not actually desirable.
Free speech is a necessity learned from the past horrors of fascism.
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...
"Hate speech, obscenity, and defamation are common categories of restricted speech in Canada. During the 1970 October Crisis, the War Measures Act was used to limit speech from the militant political opposition."
Different countries have different rules and restrictions on free speech and every country has some. If you setup a framework for comparison, you can rank them, but this doesn't always end up with the USA on top and often it's not even in the top 10. Canada often ranks over the USA.
Your assertion is thus pretty clearly not true by the best objective measures we have.
The USA also has had plenty its own issues with blocking speech. Few people know that the origin of the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" metaphor was coined by the supreme court to justify cracking down on political dissent.
I don't think it's particularly useful to attempt compare levels of free speech between the two countries without laying out a clear framework under which to do the comparison. There are organizations that do this, though you may or may not agree with the framework they use.
Countries have different standards for what qualifies as obscenity and what the consequences are.
Countries have different standards for what types of hate speech are allowed.
Freedom of Speech isn't a binary value.
In case it's not clear, in democracies a private citizen can knowingly say false things about public figures, especially political figures. A private citizen can sue you if you damage their reputation. Journalists can't usually knowingly publish falsehoods as news, but can as opinion. (Generally speaking; each country has its own implementations, of course.)
That is not true.
> Journalists can't usually knowingly publish falsehoods as news, but can as opinion
Also not true.
In the USA, journalists and private individuals have the same free speech rights and there no legal distinction between "opinion" and "news", it just matters if a reasonable person would see a statement of fact.
> That is not true.
President Biden kicks puppies and secretly owns $2B in BTC, and the SEC manipulates the price for him. Can Biden sue me? Can I be arrested?
The Constitution provides special protection for the press, as do many other laws, precedents, etc. What are your claims based on?
Yes, but you can sue anyone for anything. You not being a "journalist" doesn't provide any additional protection. Biden being a public figure does though, as he would have to demonstrate "actual malice" on your part to win.
> Can I be arrested?
Only about 1/4 of states in the USA have criminal libel laws and I am not familiar enough with them to say which if any would apply.
> The Constitution provides special protection for the press, as do many other laws, precedents
The supreme court has consistently ruled that "the press" in the first ammendment covers anyone publishing anything in any format, not just journalists. The constitution provides no special protections for journalists but instead extends those rights to everyone.
See: Associated Press v. NLRB, Bartnicki v. Vopper, Cohen v. Cowles Media Co. and more.
Most states do have "media shield laws" that specifically help journalists protect their sources, but these aren't constitutional rights. A district court in Branzburg v. Hayes did rule that a blogger didn't qualify as a journalist under Oregon's media shield law, but that was strongly influenced by the blogger soliciting payment to take the article down so isn't conclusive even there.
> Biden being a public figure does though, as he would have to demonstrate "actual malice" on your part to win.
Imagine how many people write falsehoods about Biden with clear, actual, malice! Biden cannot sue them (in a meaningful sense).
Supreme court precedents and the law. I've provided several of the relevant cases
> Imagine how many people write falsehoods about Biden with clear, actual, malice! Biden cannot sue them (in a meaningful sense).
The main reason that it would be difficult to win those cases is that as a public figure Biden would have to show "actual malice" for each person he sued regardless of if that person was a journalist or not.
In practice, the expected value if suing a large number of people with limited media reach is generally not worth it, but that has nothing to do with the constitution.
Where being a journalist might help is that media shield laws, depending on the state, could allow the journalist to protect their sources from discovery once they've veen sued.
I see things that are clearly wrong afaik (unless I misunderstand you), and others I don't know about. So I'm wondering what the source is. I can cite cases too, but I really don't have expertise.
Then point those things out and cite some resources or cases that support your claims.
> I can cite cases too, but I really don't have expertise.
Well, that would at least be better than just saying "you're wrong" over and over with no evidence.
* critique of arguments for the existence of God (reasonable or otherwise)
* critiques of national policy of a given political party (reasonable or otherwise)
* reporting on the alleged wrongdoing of a powerful political official
* allegations of infidelity of people considered royalty within a given country
* finding and reporting security bugs in medical devices that use proprietary software
* satire
* propaganda
* thought experiments
* standing in a public square and lying about established facts of science
**
If you can categorize the speech and its not in the category of yelling fire in a crowded theater, I bet it's protected by the 1st Amendment.
Edit: clarification
Edit 2: Since this is HN and you didn't specify 1st Amendment in your question, let me be pedantic and add an empty bullet point for a type of speech that is protected by the 5th amendment:
*
Edit 3: I think my empty string is in the wrong scope. One must invoke the fifth amendment by speaking. So the bullet point should look like this:
* invoking the fifth amendment to say this: (NUL byte goes here)
:)
In Israel there is a 'right' to freedom of speeech but it's illegal to call a cop a nazi[0], an American would consider that absurd
That's demonstrably false; rights like free speech are enshrined in societies all over the world. Other countries don't have a First Amendment, but they have free speech, free press, etc.
In my experience, "free speech absolutism" is more of a siboleth than an actually meaningful label. I've yet to encounter anyone who actually believes that there should never be any limits on speech.