The part where you can speak your mind without consequence from the government.

Freedom of speech is not the same in the rest of the world outside of America. Lots of European countries have hate speech laws in place where you can be convicted of crimes for speaking your mind if it's hateful. The EU has been pressuring large tech companies into self complying https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/28/16380526/eu-hate-speech-l...

But just the other day, there was a huge post with lots of uproar about how Google was flagging apps like mastodon for having no content standards regarding hate speech.

don't you realize that you are comparing that "hate speech" at EU level of "hate speech" with the possibility of saying free tibet? those are the same thing for you ? why I'm still replying here.. I think that I'm fighting the 50 cent party .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

They're not the same but I don't think that laws from China or Europe or some other country should impact services in America. If we want the same restrictions we can make the laws ourselves.

All of the western world agrees on the freedom of the press and the protection of political speech -- and that those things are necessary for the protections of human rights.

Reminds me of the guy who taught his girlfriends dog to raise it's paw when it saw hitler talking or when it heard the phrase "heil hitler". He did it as a joke and put the video on youtube and ended up going to jail over it.

Which I very strongly disagree with. It was perhaps in poor taste, but hurt no one.

It happened in Germany, where he went to jail, because he regularly showed forbidden Nazi insignia as well as regularly doing the Hitler salute and shouting "Sieg Heil" - all of which is forbidden by law in Germany.

Especially after he was already on probation for earlier transgressions against these laws.

He did not go to jail because he "only" teached his dog (it was actually his dog) a poor taste trick.

No, it happened in Scotland where none of these excuses apply, and the guy certainly was doing it as a joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan

OK - then we have two cases, as nearly the same also happened in Germany[1]. In Germany the owner was sent to prison. As far as I am aware in Scotland the owner had to pay a fine [2].

I was initially wrong in assuming there would have been only one knucklehead on this planet doing something so obviously stupid.

Sorry for that.

[1]: https://www.welt.de/print-welt/article266388/Angeklagt-Herrc...

[2]: https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.gerichtsurteil-in-...

Sorry for the sources being in German only.

Yep, that's the guy I was thinking of. Glad to see I wasn't that far off the mark.

fair enough, I'm not super familiar with the guy I just remember that being the narrative.

As an aside, I remember watching 'The Wave' years ago (I think there's a new version on netflix?) and being fascinated by it. It gave a brief glimpse into the cultural fear of what happened in Germany happening again.

Several European countries have bans on racial hatred and Nazi content because of what happened last time Nazis were allowed to promote hatred on an enormous scale: six million people were exterminated in camps, over and above the civilian and military casualties of the war.

freedom can only start with free speech and can only start dying with censorship, you tell me now ..

puns are fun but lead nowhere if you want to talk seriously

So which flavor of free speech[0] is good enough for you? Which countries pass the threshold? I know that the free speech we have in Germany is probably not good enough for most US people that are keen on free speech, but it's good enough for me (mostly).

When someone calls on the "free world", it has mostly become a US patriotism dog whistle to me without any deeper meaning.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country

Banning calls for the extermination of entire races is hardly the same as banning the discussion of Tibetan independence.

it's not all black or white, but I can tell which gray is close to white and which is close to black, and you?

Can you? So China is close to black. Iran has strong internet censorship, so I guess close to black? What about Russia, where AFAIK a normal citizen is pretty free to access information and express their opinion, but bigger political figures are regularly poisoned? What about Turkey?

People here in the comments are already pointing out Spain and the USA, which most people would probably assign to the "free world".

Of course it's a spectrum, but at what difference between countries is such a boycott realistic and doesn't quickly turn into hypocrisy if not enacted against countries uniformly? Shouldn't the USA boycott Iran or Turkey in the same manner if they boycott China? Should Norway start to do the same to US companies?

It all comes down to geopolitics. Iran and China will get the bad cop treatment, while Saudi Arabia gets kid gloves.