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Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
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Re: Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
#22Ok, a lot of the points raised here come up all the time; maybe it helps if I summarize some more of them:
- Argument: States cannot ban/close platforms - sure they can, as soon as you kick an app off the app store it's over for most of the users. That's a severe step though, and could be legally contested; my personal opinion is that it's realistic a court could deem a complete shutdown unconstitutional.
- Argument: This is censorship - not really, censorship in the German legal context means pre-control of messages before dissemination. The deal here is about implementing measures to follow German laws. Of course, in a wider sense, this is some sort of censorship mechanism which has some technical similarity with other infrastructures such as those in china. But that's the tradeoff in Germany - it's restricting free speech to protect pro-democratic elements. Whether that works or not is going to be an important question in the next years.
Re: Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
#23The collective panic and Luddism about Telegram in Germany is really scary. I watch Tagesschau (probably most respected news show) every evening. Any time Telegram is mentioned it's always being attacked, as if it's only purpose was to enable crime and terrorism.
say what you want there are stickers all over Hamburg asking you to join telegram channels if you need drugs, if you are racist or a so called "querdenker". It may not be the main use of telegram but if you are a member of the public only seeing these kind of stickers everywhere would make me worry as well.
Re: Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
#24The collective panic and Luddism about Telegram in Germany is really scary. I watch Tagesschau (probably most respected news show) every evening. Any time Telegram is mentioned it's always being attacked, as if it's only purpose was to enable crime and terrorism.
Hilarious, everyone I know in Germany uses Telegram, it seems quite popular over there.
It is, ~12 million users in a country of ~90 million.
Re: Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
#25This will be interesting. Some background for the discussion: - Germany has a different take on freedom of speech from the US. There are things that you cannot say (holocaust denial, inciting racial violence). We can argue about this, but it's deeply ingrained in the legal system and unrealistic to change - Germany has a special law regulating responsibilities and content moderation in social media (NetzDG, think sec…
The equivalent to section 230 would be Section 10 Telemediengesetz, but from my own experience law enforcement here seizes first and asks questions later for anyone that's not a household name.
NetzDG is much less broad, only applying to social networks (so not Telegram) with more than 2M users.
Re: Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
#26Another example of how centralized messengers are more vulnerable than decentralized, end-to-end encrypted networks, where anyone can run a client.
To clarify how regular people could get access to a client… any https website could host a front end widget, for instance. Easy delivery via web browser (which is general-purpose enough that it can’t ban all possible widgets and hard to ban).
Re: Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
#27The collective panic and Luddism about Telegram in Germany is really scary. I watch Tagesschau (probably most respected news show) every evening. Any time Telegram is mentioned it's always being attacked, as if it's only purpose was to enable crime and terrorism.
> Tagesschau Can you give me a date to look for an example in? I haven't see that yet.
https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/funk/todesdrohungen-t...
„In Germany, alleged individual cases of calls for killing from the lateral thinker scene have been discussed for days. Research now shows that there have been calls to kill every day since mid-November.“
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/telegram-verfassungsschutz-... „Radicalized Corona Deniers What can the state do about Telegram? Corona deniers use the Telegram messenger service to let their fantasies of violence run free. The state wants to take action against it. The new interior minister is facing a mammoth task.“
https://www.tagesschau.de/regional/nordrheinwestfalen/wdr-st... „North Rhine-Westphalia State security investigates corona demos: anti-Semitism in Telegram chats At a demonstration against the Corona measures in Kamp-Lintfort, a participant is said to have shown the Hitler salute on Tuesday. The Duisburg State Security is now investigating. The Duisburg State Security is investigating in the vicinity of the demonstrators who demonstrate as self-proclaimed "walkers" against the corona policy. The allegations are massive: It is about anti-Semitic hate speech. The focus is on chat groups that run via the "Telegram" service. The demonstrations are planned there.“
https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/br-recherche/querdenk... „MAD is investigating two other soldiers Investigations are currently underway against at least two other Bundeswehr soldiers because they made radical statements against corona measures. Research by BR and tagesschau.de revealed this . One should pay close attention to the choice of words, according to a mountain hunter in a more than seven-minute voice message published on the Telegram messenger platform in December last year. The Bundeswehr is a "company" in which everything is done to "destroy us patriots who are trapped in the Bundeswehr". What is meant is the obligation to enforce corona vaccinations for soldiers.“
Re: Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
#28The collective panic and Luddism about Telegram in Germany is really scary. I watch Tagesschau (probably most respected news show) every evening. Any time Telegram is mentioned it's always being attacked, as if it's only purpose was to enable crime and terrorism.
Yep, just like "Oh you are downloading via torrent? Why do you do illegal stuff like that?"
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Germany doesn't rule out closing Telegram – interior minister
#29Where is antifa when you need them :)