Except for the late night home raids rooting out "hate speech". Opposite of chill.

Just for anyone new here, if you have comments like this, please be specific and post something a neutral person can verify and form their own opinion on. Don't just post silly one-liners that don't have any real content.

This would have been a concrete example, where a government minister abused the system because a tweet annoyed him: https://theweek.com/news/world-news/954635/willygate-german-...

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spit2wind 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'll also take the bait. As far as I understand it, these rules come, fundamentally, from the German Basic Law which was drafted, in part, with direct support from the US after the war. There's certainly always room for healthy debate about what is meant by freedom of speech. But it strikes me as ignorant to come from a US "absolutist" perspective and not understand the history (of US involvement). No clue if the poster is approaching it from that perspective; I'm trying to raise the point of historical context in response to the category of such responses I've encountered.

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sho_hn 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'll take the bait because I'm annoyed by the boiling-frog aspect to vaguely alluding to things.

Here's the press release on this:

https://www.bka.de/DE/Presse/Listenseite_Pressemitteilungen/...

tl;dr Since in Germany it is illegal to e.g. make public postings calling for the rape of women or share video footage of women being murdered and tortured for the purpose of entertainment and gloating, one day ahead of International Womens Day police staged a big showy series of raids on individuals doing such things, to make a point and call attention to the issue.

Sounds like an excellent use of my tax money, to be honest, but it was certainly controversial also in Germany.

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on_the_train 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is also illegal to share crime statistics or make jokes about politicians

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sho_hn 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Observe how hyperbole comes without links, in comparison.

	▲	on_the_train 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		https://www.bz-berlin.de/meinung/kolumne/kolumne-mein-aerger...

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pembrook 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hrmmm, German supports using the monopoly on violence given to the state to make raids on people who make undesirable social media posts.

There’s only one problem. Whos to say you won’t be the next target if the political climate shifts to cracking down on pro-censorship voices like yourself?

Will you think its still a good use of your tax money when the opposition is putting you in a police car for this exact HN comment?

	▲	aleph_minus_one 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Hrmmm, German supports using the monopoly on violence given to the state to make raids on people who make undesirable social media posts. The German society is insanely divided on a lot of (in this case: political) topics. Better avoid making such generalizations.
	▲	sho_hn 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> German supports using the monopoly on violence given to the state to make raids on people who make undesirable social media posts. Yes. As a sibling poster mentioned, this has historical roots. German law recognizes something called "Volksverhetzung", similar to concepts in other national criminal codes in other countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung You can probably guess which hot button issue it comes up with in context the most often (if not: Holocaust denial). Essentially, there was a landmark judgement that certain forms of calling for violence against women publicly can qualify as this, and so may potentially be criminal (this would be decided case by case in an actual trial, of course). I can completely understand coming from the perspective of the First Amendment US system and having a different opinion on this. As a crude analogy, it's a bit like Americans love their free market while Europeans usually think a bit more regulation of capitalism is a sane thing to do. It's going to be difficult to agree across the pond. These things exist on a gradient. Note that plenty of other intact democracies are much stricter than Germany, e.g. South Korea where legal action against online hate speech occurs at a far larger volume, and comes together with far more tracking infrastructure and lack of anonymity on the internet (e.g. since everyone has a client cert for online commerce). And you know what? Many South Koreans want internet hate speech and trolling and bullying policed even much harder. In Germany there is constant, sometimes quite heated debate on the reach of the application of the Volksverhetzung idea. I think that's very good and have had different opinions across various cases. > Will you think its still a good use of your tax money when the opposition is putting you in a police car for this exact HN comment? I know the legislative and political processes of my country well enough to know the long process it would take to get there. If I see things slide in the wrong direction, you bet I'll vote or take to the streets on that issue, too. A country is a process that takes active participation. It's not a black or white thing you settle one time.