Then why call it out as if it were a negative? Nothing anybody says on Hacker News is going to change EU law.

Because you're exhibiting cultural imperialism.

Imperialism implies some sort of actual meddling. However, as previously established, nothing said on HN is going to change the EU. Without the possibility of any sort of meddling or interference, then there can be no Imperialism.

Interestingly though, your comment is a nice example of being irrationally fearful of free political speech.

What does that even mean?

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth here. First it's okay to comment on other culture's behaviors and now it's "cultural imperialism".

How about everyone is okay to comment on whatever they wish without the meta value judgements? I think that system works pretty well.

There is a tendency for some US commentators to totally ignore the European attitude around freedom of speech and to talk about the slippery slope to totalitarian states.

Sometimes those people will mix up "first ammendment" rights with what a website owner is allowed to do; or they appear to be unaware of the very many cases of people in America who lose their jobs or are arrested because they wear the wrong t-shirt or have an innocent poster on their door.

We often hear these people when there's coverage of twitter trolls going to court. They'll say that it's ridiculous to prosecute people for being mean on twitter. This is intensely frustrating because -and this should be fucking obvious- no-one is arrested for being a bit mean on social media. People are arrested for making credible repeated threats of violence. But that happens in the US.

>or they appear to be unaware of the very many cases of people in America who lose their jobs or are arrested because they wear the wrong t-shirt or have an innocent poster on their door.

Arrested and convicted of a crime are two different things. Do you have any evidence of that happening? I know of a Virginia teenager who was arrested last year because he wouldn't take off an NRA shirt, but first, he wasn't arrested for the shirt, he was arrested for obstruction, and second, charges were dropped.

As for European attitudes toward free speech, I don't say they're wrong for Europeans, I just think some of them are daft, like locking people up for racist remarks or offensive speech. That just turns harmless idiots into martyrs.

Do you have any examples of people "locked up for racist remarks" or "offensive speech"?

Here's a couple from 2012:

http://deadspin.com/5896709/racist-tweets-about-fabrice-muam...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/21/man-racial...

Here's 11 people who got locked up last year:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330809/Lee-Rigby-de... (daily fail, but their info appears sound)

And that was just on the first page of google. Note that in all of these cases, the comments were just ugly and racist, but not threatening.

An Englishman did three months for an offensive drunken tweet after a match, brilliant.

It's OK to comment on other cultures' behaviors, and that includes commentary on your behavior being expressive of cultural norms.