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Comment by hemabe | Hacker News Reader

In Germany (and probably in the UK too), you now have to be very careful about what you write online. There is actually a section 188 that makes insulting, defaming, or slandering people in political life a criminal offense. You can now face heavy fines for minor insults (“idiot”) or even have your home searched. A VPN can be useful here.

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If anyone wants some background info on the "idiot" comment:

A Bavarian man captioned an image of Robert Habeck (the vice chancellor of Germany at the time) with "Schwachkopf Professional" - "Professional Idiot". It was styled after the Schwarzkopf ad campaign. For this, Habeck filed a criminal complaint "to stop hate crime" against the man and the man's apartment was searched by the police and a tablet confiscated. Oh, and he was arrested over it as well. [0]

(The man was also accused of posting some nazi imagery earlier in the year, but the order to search his house seems to be related only to the insult. [1])

Imagine if you could be arrested for calling your (vice) president an idiot.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...

[1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/falschaussage-im-fall-sc... (it's in German)

You don't treasure your freedom of speech until you lose it.

> Imagine if you could be arrested for calling your (vice) president an idiot.

You must not set foot in the USA, India, China, et cetera, then.

Imagine you say? Getting arrested might be the least of your worries in today's world if you decide to call a president (or the immediate underling) an idiot in many countries :D

What idiot signed that bullshit into law?

That law has existed since 1951 and is based on an executive order from 1931 by Hindenburg.

This is actually not uncommon in most of the world. American 1A is actually an extremely novel concept most other countries still haven't caught up on.

American 1A is as strong as it's proving to be right now and increasingly proving to be stronger and stronger by the day, since January this year!

Many other countries have protections like that, "on paper" (!!!) - but the point is in how it is used or misused, or rather completely ignored - directly or indirectly, like in the USA currently and many other countries in the world.

Novel in what sense? Are you familiar with the hisory of free speech in e.g. the UK, Sweden, and France?

The UK, where the government has literally smashed printing presses in the newspaper age when magazines were thought to be publishing embarrassing news about the Crown? Where the government's legal authority to do so is still intact? That UK?

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