Thanks for the link. That was a very interesting article. I knew some about Facebook in Myanmar, but I learned some things - always a good thing!
I will continue to pull this conversation back to the US for the simple reasons that: I'm a US citizen, the western world is dominated by the US, including on-line discourse that is (or should be) subject to US laws for US companies in the US - which is THE dominant on-line market (even for TikTok).
Of course you are right that international companies are subject to the laws of the countries they operate in. My concern is the erosion of rights of Americans due to the influence of (IMO) possibly good meaning (possibly not) of foreign laws that are completely open to misuse by powerful forces.
I'll make one easy example. You write,
"In Canada we have Criminal Code section 319(1), which is a law against publicly inciting hatred—making it an offence to communicate statements in a public place which incite hatred against an identifiable group, where it is likely to lead to a breach of the peace."
"Hatred" - cannot be objectively defined
"Identifiable group" - includes everyone
"likely" - cannot be objectively defined
"breach of the peace" - very difficult to objectively quantify
In the US there are countless peer-reviewed studies that show that a loan application submitted by a "black-sounding named person" will be turned down for a loan or given worse conditions than the exact same loan application filed by a "white-sounding named person" with a lower financial credit score than the "black-sounding named person." This is a clear example of systemic racism in the US financial market.
A black rights group could (probably has, IDK) bring this up and protest at a state capital to change the laws to fix this problem. A powerful white group could easily say the black protesters must be arrested because they are inciting hatred against whites and their protest is a breach of the peace. A white leaning police and judiciary could (and IMO does very often) support the white groups shutting down the attempts to end systemic racism.
Laws like yours in Canada (and lots of other places FAR worse IMO) lead to an erosion of US First Amendment rights by a "race to the bottom" pushed by the powerful forces that don't like the US first amendment because it was (and is) specifically designed to limit the power of the state.
