Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bahamut1928 2851 days ago
Please understand that for many of us in the EU, freedom of speech as understood and implemented by Americans is not something desirable.

Based solely on my personal experience, most of the people are actually happy on how censorship is handled by our institutions. I've never felt restricted in expressing my opinion in whichever topic we are discussing, and I am actually happy that people preaching racist ideologies (that have cost us a lot in the past) find some obstacles in their way.

I personally don't consider your freedom of speech as inherently superior or the obvious step into progress. As many things in life, it has its pros and cons. Would you deem as "progress" all those echo chambers on the internet where people find support for ideologies that have cost millions of lives in the past?

1 comments

>I've never felt restricted in expressing my opinion in whichever topic we are discussing

Of course, if you belong to a mainstream ideology...

In some cases I do, in others I don't. I've never encounter censorship in either of those. Besides, I had some pretty interesting discussions with people expressing ideas which did not agree with my thoughts. If, as you said, I would be on the "mainstream" side, they would have been censored. That did not happen.