Also, unlike the previous block this one applies even to the users who are using the app downloaded directly from Telegram site and not the iOS/Google Play version.
The blocking happens after German minister of interior had a meeting with Telegram directors a few days ago.
Germany is also one of those countries that blanket bans particular groups/parties in general, which the US didn't really do until after 9/11. Banning a group chat isn't much different.
Avocadolf's channels are public, you could access them on the Telegram web UI even without an account. The German government has tried to get the channel shut down for months now, after Hildmann fled the country and engaged in Holocaust denial (which is a crime here).
The problem is that unlike all other major social networks, Telegram refuses to comply with German laws (in particular the NetzDG) and has refused to name a contact person for the authorities so that egregious violations could be stopped. I read an article that claimed the only form of contact between German authorities and Telegram used to be a bilateral anti-terror coordination with the US FBI, which makes sense given the common problem of radical Islamist terrorism.
You make it sound like Germany is constantly banning political parties. There have been exactly two bans of political parties in the post-war history of Germany: A nazi party in 1952 and a communist party in 1956. Also don't forget who occupied Germany in this decade and made a lot of its decisions.
By mistranslating this to “censoring” you are using the language of those who are actively distributing fake news.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I hope that you’ll correct the title of the post.
[1] For example, this is a post in Telegram's own public channel https://t.me/telegram/167 [2] For example, this two: https://tg.i-c-a.su/ and https://rss.app/rss-feed/create-Telegram-rss-feed
I live in the US, I know infinitely more people that have been hurt by rogue showerheads than ISIS, yet even publicly saying that you support them and their aims can get you put in prison.
edit: "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" was a reason given for jailing US socialists who were protesting against the WWI draft.
This is no longer standing case law as it was overturned by Brandbenburg v. Ohio
Also, Germans aren't really the kind of people to protest on the streets. They'd much rather complain and complain and maybe change the position of their cross on the next ballot to a party just a small tip further left or right, only to then start complaining that nothing ever really changes and readjust their cross in the opposite direction in the following election. This cycle repeats since about 70 years.
So yes, if the Germans really did not want this kind of stuff, they would have to drastically change their votes. And bear in mind that the current government, which is the most dramatic change (to the left) in the last 16 years since the Merkel era, has already lost the goodwill according to surveys, with people already again favoring the Merkel party (e. g. said readjustment).
Does it matter? No mainstream party is going to legalize the Nazis again. At best they would look like they approve of nazis. Worst outcome is that nazis become political rivals.
You can do lots of crazy stuff and talk a lot of shit in Germany, but relavating the holocaust is off-bounds for good reason.
It is insensitive, but by doing it they are clearly anti-Nazi. They are not belittling the Holocaust and they are not comparing vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.
I don't find this particularly objectionable on it's own; Nazis and neo-Nazis never believed in free speech to begin with. However, we should still remain wary of false positives or scope creep beyond this narrow carve-out.
Reading the article leads to a better discussion. Link to translated article https://netzpolitik-org.translate.goog/2022/nach-gespraechen...
Not exactly like this. You are allowed to speak your mind as a Nazi. You may say you are a Nazi and also say why you think they are superior etc. blablabla.
You are not allowed, to wear certain symbols of NS times (swastika and co) and you are not allowed to deny that the holocaust happened and to glorify certain SS organisations.
Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace:
incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or
assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population,
shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years.
What you were referencing is §86 and §86a StGB.
So they do deny freedom of speech and freedom of expression to people that the government doesn't like (in this case Neo-Nazis).
The amount of mental gymnastics people do is astounding.
Local laws may change from place to place. What is maybe reasonable in place A (and we may both agree with) may not be reasonable in place B
The German government has even tried attacking Gab, and regardless of what you may think of Gab, it is not a good thing if you do not want to find yourself one day having overslept living in a totalitarian regime. Just consider the implications of a foreign government taking action against a US website, wholly based in the USA, because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land (Constitution), and are in line with all principles of human rights.
It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA or even just negatively discussing actions and behaviors of Americans, just as much as it would be evil for anyone else to do that.
We are entering a really dangerous situation where people are sleepwalking into supporting authoritarianisms, simply because they are conditioned to think they are part of the in-group. But that never lasts once the trap doors are slammed shut.
You either support freedom, free speech, and human rights or you don't; there is no freedom and human rights light.
You either are totalitarian in your ideology, or you have no ideology. Or something like this?
I am very pro free speech, much more than the average. But even I think there are limitations. It is not all black and white. Example?
"I think person X is doing not so smart things"
"I think person X is an idiot"
"I think person X is an idiot and needs to die"
"I think person X is and idiot and we need to kill him"
Where is the clear line from free speech to insult and then to inciting violence for example?
They are. The operators of the channel have an open arrest warrant for inciting hatred, denying the holocaust and death threats against public and private persons.
> wholly based in the USA because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land, and are in line with all principles of human rights.
That changes when the "wholly USA" website is being used by German citizens, who are under jurisdiction.
>It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA
I's not about "disparaging things about the <country>", it's about running a website or service and not reacting to the fact that actual nazis are using the service. (You know with the eugenics and everything!)
If you think stopping nazis is authoritarianism, then you'd be the same kind of person that lets authoritarianism bootstamp all over them in the name of freedom. (Paradox of Tolerance)
Then block the website in your country. If I have no physical, legal, or economic presence in your country, I shouldn't expect to have to follow your laws. Do I need to start enforcing Thai lèse majesté laws too, now?
1. The law where a service is hosted applies. Entities in other legal jurisdictions may not be allowed to do business with the service (e.g. run ads on it) if it doesn't follow the law where they're located. Cost: people may be able to access content that's illegal where they live.
2. The law where the user is located applies. Anyone putting up a website must familiarize themselves with the laws of 195 countries where users could be and comply with all of them, or at least the ones that have a friendly relationship to the host's country. Service operators must block users from jurisdictions with laws they can't obey. Cost: this is a nightmarish compliance landscape only large companies can deal with; the internet becomes much less global.
3. Countries put up a Great Firewall of X. Cost: the hacker community has traditionally considered censorship bad; the internet becomes much less global.
1) If the site is run as a tor endpoint, and says "no German users allowed", I wonder how the jurisdiction thing plays out. (Yes, I'm asking HN for legal advice!)
2) The US recently had Mein Kampf toting neo-nazis working in the white house (Trump's PR team didn't even bother hiding this, and publicly praise Hitler's propaganda machine.) So, the US is pretty far down the Paradox of Tolerance rathole. At some point we'll need to flip the "Nazis must die!" bit like we did in WWII, unless the GOP corrects it's own course.
Apparently Pence publicly disagreed with our deposed dictator about the VP's ability to unilaterally overthrow elections. Trump didn't resort to name calling like he usually does. (Over 70% of Trump voters and 75% of Americans agree with Pence on this, for what it's worth.)
Maybe there's still reason to hope the US isn't headed to some sort of Apartheid-style "democracy", where idiots run everything and just ignore election results. Maybe?
Then Germans will have to prosecute those going to the website and using it or remove it from German DNS servers. Germany has no right to try and limit the rights of US citizens by extension of limiting those of Germans.
> I's not about "disparaging things about the <country>", it's about running a website or service and not reacting to the fact that actual nazis are using the service. (You know with the eugenics and everything!)
As much as I hate the Nazis, Nazi sentiment is not illegal in the USA as long as they stay within the law. The German government has no right to push their ideology and laws here. Again block Germans from the site or sue to have Parler block German user IP addresses (good luck with that, it won't last 5 minutes before the judge laughs and says "next case")
The laws against insults stem from a feudal honor system, it is not about dignity. Dignity != Honor. One is intrinsic, one is extrinsic. Of course there is a red line where an insult becomes defamation, but German law is quite old and laws are very slowly deprecated. There are still articles against blasphemy for example.
Common law countries are the much more advanced societies in this regard. But even discussing this in Germany is next to impossible. I would not recommend to even think about compromising with any demands out of Germany on this topic. The privacy approach is better, but the condemnation of "hate speech" only helped dictators around the world.
On the other hand, if the book is prevented from being published or stocked in the first place, if school or public libraries simply refuse to carry it, teachers don't assign it, or if the information is not in book form, nobody cares.
As I understand it, writing/distributing child porn fiction in the US is against the law. Conceptually, that's the same thing; expressing ideas that cause no _direct_ harm to anyone.
Why? Germany has literally criminalised thinking the wrong things and denies people to associate freely based on the things that they happen to think.
It doesn't stop those people thinking those things and it doesn't stop people from associating with each other.
So if you have engaged in Holocaust denial, don't travel to Germany:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/former-green-party-cand...
That may require waiting until a good English-language article appears, but the more significant the topic is, the more (and sooner) this is likely to happen.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deepl-translate-be...
Wunderbar!
Given that MobileCoin is a new way for them to fund their operations without a trace, it's sound very attractive for these extremists to stay underground without exposing themselves due to Signal's E2EE than Telegram. Also, no censorship on Signal, so it is a free for all without the consequences.
Best part is, MobileCoin is just about to be a great pump and dump ponzi once they officially launch on Signal. Great value proposition for criminals and speculators.
Signal groups are poor at that. The work required to encrypt messages increases with group members. People don't want to show their phone numbers in large public groups, and Signal also lacks the group admin/moderation options necessary to handle many hundreds or thousands of members.
Telegram is probably the only tech in world, which has this unique mechanism of communicating. Cloud backup, groups/channels, anonymous usernames, e2e encryption feature (1 to 1, not by default), censorship resistance more than other messaging/social media companies, all bundled together.
The US would do the same with a Telegram/Snapchat group hosting AlQaeda supporters.
Germany can just get the app removed from app stores:
https://voi.id/en/technology/114013/senior-german-official-a...
And this is true of other centralized software:
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/18/the-freest-platform-...
It's hard to ban all those sites. Telegram actually has such widgets, but they prefer to rely on everyone downloading their main app. Moxie also complains that decentralized stuff is slow to change.
I wonder if Telegram will adopt the same thing they did in Germany here in Brazil to prevent the ban...
I read the article translated into English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&u=h...
Then, I went to read this person's Wiki page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Hildmann
He sounds like a reasonable person until 2015. I am not a psychiatrist, but this person sounds like they are descending into serious mental illness. How else do you go from a health food public persona... publish multiple cookbooks on the matter, the descend into some kind of 1980s "crazy person" talking about Holocaust denial, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, etc.?
This person needs help from mental health professionals. Plain and simple.
Please do not read this post as someone apologising for anti-semitic comments -- directly or indirectly. No, I reject (200%!) anti-semitic comments from _mentally healthy people_. This person has gone "over the edge"!
Does anyone else feel the same as me? I hope his family can get him help. He should go back to healthy cookbooks and forget about all the crazy conspiracy theories...
This will probably get flagged or downvoted to oblivion but meanwhile, no one bats an eye at the worldwide brushing under the rug of the Palestinian Apartheid.