Favouriting this for the next time someone on here tells me we don't have free speech in Europe, only in the US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
The USA's score has taken rather a tumble since 2016 (I wonder why?).
How many it's unclear, but it was ~150[0] some years ago, of which 50 in France[1] to monitor 180 countries.
It's worth as a generic "are we doing better than last year?" but I wouldn't consider ranking to be particularly meaningful.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130819031406/http://en.rsf.org...
[1] https://akademie.dw.com/en/the-press-freedom-index-by-report...
But most US population ain't HN, at all. Most don't travel, get their opinion on the world from CNN or Fox news with corresponding results and thus have rather primitive view on rest of the world (sorry, that is true, one needs to travel a bit to understand world).
You don't travel when you are crushed by debt and rising costs from all sides, do you.
Travel produces different distortions. A lot of British people think the rest of the world is a lot better than it is because they visit places on holiday: they visit nice places and have good experiences. I have known some to get into messes when they actually try to live somewhere else.
Just consider prominent recent examples, like the german student protester that was investigated by police and had his sign confiscated (it just said "Merz (current cancellor) suck balls"). This seems ridiculous and draconian by US standards.
Or literally investigating all protestors, at scale? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/politics/justice-dept-...
That is a different argument: The Trump administration is not really shifting the defamation vs. free speech tradeoff in the US (you could argue that it does, in the opposite direction, by slandering political opponents with insulting nicknames like "crooked Hillary" or "sleepy Joe").
The case you quoted did happen, but it is one of a few crazy outliers. In the meantime you have literal university police bashing in on protesters, border police looking into peoples smart phones and policing their social media, students being expelled for pro palestinian positions, ...
You call that a crazy outlier, but under the previous administration some retiree had police knock on his door and confiscate his tablet (!) because he posted a meme calling a member of the green party an "idiot" (Schwachkopf).
Meanwhile, all the counterexamples that people bring up here are strictly tied to the Trump administration.
The DHS is sending subpoenas to google over mildly critical online posts. [0] By your own standards, that must be ridiculous and draconian too, yes?
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-dhs-aclu-lawsuit-canadian-j...
But police knocking on your door and confiscating your device because you called some politician an "idiot" by posting an online meme seems almost unthinkable in the US, when even the president himself is slinging insults like that at political opponents all the time.
My point is not that there is clear black/white line and the US have free speech and Europe doesn't, just that the free speech/defamation tradeoff is slightly different.
But your overall point - that not every population defines free speech the same way - is accurate. I think the difference here is just a bit less than sometimes implied.
Those tended to be gratuitously misreported as well, where the reports would say "this person was arrested for making [relatively innocuous comment] on social media]" and then you discover that the actual issue was a lengthy period of harassment and doxing directed at a specific trans person. Or encouraging other people to burn down a hotel, or so on.
/s
But good for us, more visits of these folks who have very negative image in rest of the world. Any corrupt entrenched a-hole would be nice, what about Fico in Slovakia? Orban's best buddy in mindset and methodologies. Next one is Babis in Czech republic. With that done, EU would be free from corrupt russian double agents, for now at least.
It makes a lot more sense than being investigated by the FBI because you wrote a negative article about the head or being charged for reposting some cryptic numbers.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/feb/...
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/28/politics/justice-departme...
There are so many shades of gray in freedom of speech. In free European countries the police are also not at the door of outspoken government critics.
If you are alluding to dictatorial European countries like Russia and Belarus, the US is miles away and moving in their direction. Compared to Western Europe, there is no difference.
I if want to go to the US on the other hand, I need to give them my social media accounts. That doesn't sound like free speech to me
(Intra-Schengen flights lets you avoid most of this, but the heavier enforcement on extra-Schengen is the tradeoff)
But tbh its so much nicer when journalists self censor to not lose their job because of access to healthcare.
Or when billionaires buy entire media empires and fire journalists critical of the goverment.
Bezos owning WP, Murdoch owning everything else, Sinclair owning local stations... the free speech is so fucking goood