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?

> 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.

> 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.