EU is 500M people Saudi Arabia is 40M Also, GDPR doesn’t ‘almost definitely violates the first amendment’, GDPR wasn’t passed by Congress. A GDPR-like rule might violate the first amendment if you allow a really extensive definition of speech, and even in such a setting there would be a lot of room to argue.

> GDPR wasn’t passed by Congress.

That's the point. Neither were SA's censorship laws. You have to conform to laws that wouldn't fly in the USA to do business in other countries.

I don’t think it’s a valid comparison though because market sizes aren’t the same and because viewing GDPR as a free speech is far from obvious (it actually requires yogi master like bending abilities) You could argue that anti hate speech laws in some European countries (eg France) are the same. It’s also not necessarily correct that ‘you have to conforms to laws ... to do business in other countries’. Many trades treaties supersede local laws also, when there’s political will it’s perfectly possible to restrict what private businesses can do abroad (eg Iran).

> market sizes aren’t the same

I'm not sure why this matters, I'm sure they make enough money from SA users to justify region-locking specific episodes.

> it’s perfectly possible to restrict what private businesses can do abroad

This is not relevant. An appropriate example would be a company operating in a foreign country where they willfully ignore that country's laws.

> Netflix is GDPR compliant although that almost definitely violates the first amendment

Can you explain what you mean by this point? AFAIK the First Amendment is a US thing and GDPR is something Europeans wanted.

It doesn’t, any more than Facebook or Twitter can, as non-government actors, censor Americans. There are some lobbying groups which push the argument that any sort of accountability is a free speech violation but that’s rhetorical ammunition not to be confused with a sound legal argument.