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

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

#121

Post by hutzlibu »

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…

"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?

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

#122

Post by Arnt »

YEwSdObPQT wrote: post #118
Arnt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people have killed ~200 people in Germany since reunification. (Older data aren't reliable.) Putting a brake on that isn't unjustified.

So you are saying that the laws in place haven't worked?

The bans seem to work, AFAICT, but only after each ban takes effect, not before.

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

#123

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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…

> My guess is that at this point Germany is saying that this could fall into the criminal side of things, at which point Telegram would care.

Not sure where telegram is registered, but can a foreign company have a criminal responsiblity by just being accessible in that country? I'm sure most of the internet violates some kind of ancient anti-something law, be it nudity or whatever, but noone really cares if boobs are illegal in afghanistan, why care if something is illegal in germany, if you're an (eg.) british company?

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

#124

Post by RHSeeger »

colechristensen wrote: post #19
jevoten wrote: post #9

Avoid censorship with this one weird trick: Print the information in a book, and put it in a library, or even on a school curriculum, if you can. If anyone tries to remove the book, then we are back to the dark ages of book banning or even burning. You know who else burned books, right? On the other hand, if the book is prevented from being published or stocked in the first place, if school or public libraries simply…

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

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.

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

#125

Post by throwaway2037 »

My comment will appear abstract compared to the vast majority of free speech-related comments.

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...

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

#126

Post by scotty79 »

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.

It's ok because the thoughts they ban are not novel, they had their time and were thoroughly executed on.

You'll have hard time convincing anyone that thought "Jews are inferior race and should be exterminated" should have the same right to be considered as any other. When we already thought this thought extensively and even based our actions on it and it led only to unprecedented nhuman suffering.

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

#127

Post by ajsnigrutin »

mannerheim wrote: post #114
BitwiseFool wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem like Telegram is actually doing business in Germany. I feel like simply having German citizens using your app doesn't mean that the nation state of Germany has the same authority over your business as if you were actually registered as a GmbH in their territory.

I believe the German government has a novel interpretation of their jurisdiction as covering any website with content in the German language (see the Project Gutenberg debacle).

On one hand, they can believe in many things, including jurisdictions, on the other hand, what can they actually do, against a company that is registered in some other country and abiding the laws there?

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

#128

Post by Normille »

mannerheim wrote: post #73
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to do business in a country you usually have to follow the laws of the country. If you are not following these laws and you get booted out of their respective markets you can't cry censorship it's that easy.

Does this apply to China as well?

...or the US?

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

#129

Post by piaste »

zaarn wrote: post #60
encryptluks2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can, and it is censorship if a country is banning your platform for not censoring public discourse. That is exactly what is happening here. It would be like liberals in the US blocking Telegram nationwide for allowing anti-mandate discussion and then saying the reason has not nothing to do with censorship.

This isn't about "anti-mandate" discussion, it's about blocking the channel of someone (Avocadolf) who's got an open arrest warrant for inciting hatred and denying the holocaust as well as death threats to politicians (actual threats, not just dancing around the issue). I believe death threats are illegal even in the US.

Death threats are illegal pretty much everywhere but not necessarily subject to censorship. The threat is the crime, not the content. If someone is already dead, I can safely print a whole hardcover book of death threats against them.

On the other hand, forcibly removing content for the sake of the content is censorship. It can be censorship that most people approve of - which they usually do when the content is sufficiently vile and irredeemable - but it's still censorship.

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

#130

Post by _-david-_ »

pessimizer wrote: post #71
thgaFa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Pretty bold to make the assumption that there aren't real Nazis in Germany. edit: if you were a Nazi and made it past 1953 in West Germany, the only likely further repercussion or punishment for anything you did was maybe an Israeli assassin, if you were famous.

The person you are responding to did not say there aren't real Nazis in Germany. He used the word "Rarely".
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