>> Unfortunately outside the US and a handful of other places free speech doesn't seem to be valued that much, often it's even viewed as a threat

>Can you convince me of this? Because it's not my impression.

In my country (Macedonia), our then-Prime Minister a few years ago during the height of the pandemic, spoke (broken) English and funnily pronounced vaccines, something like "vac-signs" (or "vaksajns" in Macedonian). A guy made a website called vaksajns.com or .mk (can't remember the exact details) and if you visited it, it automatically redirected you to the Ministry of Health covid watch page. Police showed up at his door and he was taken to the police station to be questioned. This would never happen in a true free speech country like the United States.

Free speech in principle is enshrined in the Macedonian constitution as a fundamental right (I studied law), but there are many hate speech laws (we have a complex ethnic structure and wars based on ethnic sides), making it so that free speech isn't a thing (I studies law, if I need to clarify once more.)

If you criticize someone based on their religion, ethnicity, or whatever else that they can't control, you will be fined, or worse (although this does get selectively applied, mainly based on how much political power the group has which the offended member is a part of. Roma people have no political power in this country, so this very rarely happens when they do get offended(I don't think it has ever happened to be honet))- this does not happen in the US where free speech rains supreme (to clarify, i don't think we should go around criticizing people based on things they cant control, *but once you start limiting things the people can and cannot say, you don't have free speech* in your nationstate, Period.)

And what's funny, nobody talks about freedom of speech. Ever. Every political party and politicians of opposing political parties, and even their supporters have seemed to implicitly agree that it's somehow not an issue at all that the all-good state can tell you what's right and what's wrong, and what can be said and what can not be said.

Another funny story. At around the same time when the previous story takes place, the government made an official dictionary of the Macedonian language, supposed to contain all of the known words, BUT excluded all of the offensive words. Talk about state censorship...

What I described, more or less applies to the entire EU. Hate speech laws reign supreme in Europe. Asian countries do not have a good track record of freedom of speech, to say the least, either. I'm not sure about Africa, though I'm sure, that in the countries that do have a stable government, things aren't dissimilar when compared to European and Asian countries.

I've also lived in the US, and I've observed that it's the only place in the world where free speech is, actually, free.

Anybody who disagrees hasn't lived in a country other than the US *and* experienced life there. No, going to a country for 3 months back in '98 when you were in college and only going to parties does not, alas, constitute experiencing life in that country - at best you experienced party life (if you were not blackout drunk), which is a very tiny subset of life.

And to the Europeans and other people except those who live in the US, trust me, you do not know, what free speech feels like, not until you can experience the true freedom to express yourself like you can in the US. If you've done extensive research on this topic, you may actually know what it is, but not the actual indescribable feeling.

Also, have you ever heard of what happened in Tiananmen square, in Hong Kong a few years ago, in Prague a few centuries ago, in Kent State in the US (mind you, one of these was taken much, much, inexplainably much more seriously than the other events.) But I guess you haven't, considering you're asking people to convince you that free speech is not valued that much in countries outside the US.