Re:Wikipedia editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia ...
by LudwigNagasena on Tuesday January 17, 2023 @01:03PM
(#34416049)
Well, it wasn't me who pointed that out, but I agree with that. Whether it is bad, less bad or good is quite irrelevant to whether it is true. America had government censorship regimes for centuries, I fully agree with that. It has an awful government plagued by similar kinds of bureaucratic diseases that we can notice elsewhere. What is more, it is a quite atrocious government with regards to human rights of its non-citizens and sometimes even with regards to its own citizens. That said, it still provides far more speech protections than any other country in the world.
On paper, a law saying you can't be a particular political ideology sounds like you just tore the beating heart straight out of free speech's chest. When you realize, "oh wait it's just the Nazis", it's less bad, and in practice speech is still mostly free in countries with these laws.
And on paper America has the strongest free speech protections in the world. In practice, we've had government censorship regimes for centuries. And our legal system is entirely blind to private censorship enabled by monopolies.