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Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

netzpolitik.org

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Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#101

Post by doowop »

estranhosidade wrote: post #2

The article is written in German, but with a Google Translate you can understand the just of it. Apparently Telegram added a new blocking system based on phone numbers, sorta a geo-blocking thing, and people with German phone numbers registered on their Telegram accounts aren't able to access those blocked channels. Also, unlike the previous block this one applies even to the users who are using the app downloaded di…

The headline of your post is very misleading since the linked articles headline translates to “Telegram blocks(!) channels”, not cencors.

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.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#102

Post by martin_a »

gkalrq wrote: post #61
martin_a wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone was fine until some of the people who are against the Covid regulations started with comparing the vaccinations to the holocaust, wearing stars which resembled the "Judenstern" given out by the Nazis with the word "unvaccinated" on them to demontrations and alike. 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.

I do not understand this logic. The "Judenstern" predated the Holocaust by a long time, so they are comparing mandatory vaccination to a slippery slope rather than the to end of the slope. The "Judenstern" is how it all started , i.e (in their view), by segregating clean and unclean groups with vaccine checks. It is insensitive, but by doing it they are clearly anti-Nazi. They are not belittling the Holocaust and the…

Sorry for being unclear, I'm talking about this "Judenstern": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge

That one clearly has a Nazi background.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#103

Post by tpoacher »

Justsignedup wrote: post #22
mschuster91 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably makes sense. I'm not super familiar with Telegram, but to know a channel is doing stuff that's against German law probably means that someone with access to the channel reported it to authorities. 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…

The challenge with Telegram is that it has server costs, but it has no income cash flow. They're experimenting. But overall its 100% investment money. And so if they cannot be tried criminally, there's no business loss if they can't take German cash. This is obviously an issue with Facebook who cares about cash quite a bit, or Reddit, or whatever. But not Telegram. So yeah. My guess is that at this point Germany is s…

I need a huge fact-check on this, but I seem to remember that while the "no cash flow" statement is trivially true, in practice isn't the investment capital already enough to cover several decades of funding?

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#104

Post by Arnt »

t0bia_s wrote: post #75
estranhosidade wrote: post #2

The article is written in German, but with a Google Translate you can understand the just of it. Apparently Telegram added a new blocking system based on phone numbers, sorta a geo-blocking thing, and people with German phone numbers registered on their Telegram accounts aren't able to access those blocked channels. Also, unlike the previous block this one applies even to the users who are using the app downloaded di…

Another reason to use Element (Matrix), where phone number is not required.

Does Matrix have groups like Telegram's? I thought Matrix was just a messenger app.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#105

Post by kyberias »

estranhosidade wrote: post #2

The article is written in German, but with a Google Translate you can understand the just of it. Apparently Telegram added a new blocking system based on phone numbers, sorta a geo-blocking thing, and people with German phone numbers registered on their Telegram accounts aren't able to access those blocked channels. Also, unlike the previous block this one applies even to the users who are using the app downloaded di…

Gist of it.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#106

Post by zaarn »

frankfrankfrank wrote: post #98

This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them. What this is all about is incremental conditioning towards normalizing censorship for "local law" violations … the same kinds of wanton "laws" conjured up by all the dictatorial regimes that all the western societies are quickly drifting towards. The German government has even tried attacking Gab, an…

>This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them.

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 ", 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)

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#107

Post by ls15 »

Arnt wrote: post #104
t0bia_s wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason to use Element (Matrix), where phone number is not required.

Does Matrix have groups like Telegram's? I thought Matrix was just a messenger app.

Matrix has "rooms".

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#108

Post by YEwSdObPQT »

hutzlibu wrote: post #38
kmeisthax wrote: post #23

Can't read German, but I'm going to assume the channels in question are full of neo-Nazis. If that's the case then this isn't anything particularly new; Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis. 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 beyo…

"Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis." 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.

So you aren't allowed to speak freely and they are controlling what people can and can't wear?

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.

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#109

Post by dang »

We have deep respect for German and other languages, but HN is an English-language site, so posts here need to be in English.

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...

Re: Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”

#110

Post by brazzy »

YEwSdObPQT wrote: post #82
colechristensen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany bans things like Holocaust denial and certain things about far right political parties. It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this.

> It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this. 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.

> Germany has literally criminalised thinking the wrong things, and denies people to associate freely based on the things that they happen to think.

Yeah, like "all jews should be killed". Good thing.

> It doesn't stop those people thinking those things and it doesn't stop people from associating with each other.

It prevents such things from being normalized and makes it harder for them to be put in action.

Yeah, I know what you learned in school that this is worse than actual mass murder, and that everyone should be allowed to advocate for mass murder so that they can be disputed in the "marketplace of ideas".

In reality, what you get is echo chambers that lead people to believe that they're part of a majority who thinks that mass murder (of the right groups, of course) is good, and then some of them start to think that it's up to them to just go and do it.

In reality, criminalizing thinking certain clearly defined wrong things protects the freedom of everyone.

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