I don’t think it’s just a US thing. Even in places with more limited free speech, people can get away with saying ignorant and heinous things as long as it is technically within the letter of the law, or if the law is not strictly enforced.
It’s against the law in China to threaten violence or use hate speech, for example, but in practice, I think the law may as well be reworded to clarify that such language is only really illegal when aimed at Han Chinese people.
Not enough countries care about protecting anyone other than their primary in-group.
There, third time’s the charm (or 10th, more accurately, since lemmy.world is shitting the bed right now).
I think I figured out what was going on, too. The app I use was automatically re-parsing spoiler formatting into its own syntax, but then was erroneously applying that same syntax to text when attempting to view source. So even the example you posted looked different to me when viewed in app versus on the actual site. I made the edit from the site this time and I think that should be good now.