The Censorship Network: Regulation and Repression in Germany Today | Hacker News Reader

The Censorship Network: Regulation and Repression in Germany Today

liber-net.org

31 pointssva_23 comments

As a German, I currently don’t see any meaningful censorship via legislation. That said I do see censorship in practicality via public opinion, shaming and hate against you if you speak out against "mainstream" opinion. That said, a lot of the institutions listed here are actually, at least in principle, made to conquer that, not make it worse. And even if I don’t really see them succeeding at making it better I also don’t see them making it worse…

Yes, what the report calls intimidation I perceive primarily to originate in social media echo chambers / cancel culture.

It should be alarming how pervasive these efforts have become, especially given Germany's history. There's a near-total lack of public awareness and media opposition on... a number of issues in Germany. Then again, there's probably a lot of Germans who love this.

It is not pervasive. The chart the report shows essentially is a random map of organizations in Germany who are involved in any way with public speech.

Like claiming the FBI is involved with censoring Americans because it is their job to seize certain illegal websites.

I don't know about their methodology, but as a German, I get the feeling that the project is rather vague.

For example, I would have liked to see more specifics on what they define as censorship in terms of scope.

Mainstream discourse in Germany is very conservative when it comes to defining censorship. They would hardly name de-ranking, deplatforming, intimidation, exclusion from the financial system, or even full control of information by private organizations as censorship. Government-enacted media bans, such as the Commission banning Russian state media, are rarely viewed as censorship by Germans. ( https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-rt-sputnik-illegal-eu... )

I'm not trying to make a value statement in one direction or the other, but if your communication product addresses a market or seeks to tie into public discourse, it should be in touch with its concepts.

Weird to read something from an unknown (to me) organization which claims censorship in Germany when I as a German can't recall any instances in the last thirty years which I would consider censored in Germany.

Like I mean yes Doom was censored as a game due to gore/violence. But what else?

Have to check the report.

But the thing is: Censorship is not the issue in Germany. Disinformation is. We get too much bullshit information unhindered which causes chaos.

After a short skim of the report. It takes the angle that Germany's attempt to fight online hatespeech and disinformation would stifle speech and takes concern with paltry sums such as 30-50m spend annually to fight hate speech online. It all sounds pretty ridiculous to me when you consider that Cambridge Analytica doesn't even appear in the report as one of the wake-up calls to European countries that social media has become weaponized to attack democracies and influence elections. This isn't about free speech for Germans in Germany but how can we can keep Chinese interest through TikTok, Russian propaganda through X and comment sections and other foreign influences at bay?

> Trusted Flaggers

> 1 Pimmel Affäre

> Schwachkopf Affäre

Oder zuletzt

> https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/suedbaden/a... and last but not least:

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc

Germany is very much implementing censorship by chilling effect.

I think your examples aren't that much censorship but rather individuals/politicians asserting their rights not to let anybody smear them on social media.

The rules which made e.g. insults illegal haven't changed but society stopped allowing anonymous people online getting away with it.

Maybe some background for non-German readers on Pimmelgate (Dick gate):

Pimmelgate happened when a secretary of state in one of the German states was called a 'dick' on social media and the politician had the guy who posted this swatted by state police. The state minister lost the resulting legal battle and was ridiculed online for his short fuse.

Not pretty certainly. Certainly an abuse of power by a politician leading the police in that state, but also widely reported and criticized. In my mind it doesn't compare for instance Donald Trump going after Comey or suing public broadcasters.

You have not looked into all examples. Trusted flaggers have been used to suppress people they personally disagree with.

Just recently the wrong comment caused another home invasion by the police that drew wide criticism

> https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article68fa5facc014c...

The Article I linked about the Bundeswehr was about a students satire against the military.

And in the 60 Minute interview the prosecutors literally admit that they use illegal searches of your home as a punishment.

Suggesting someone is part of the SS as an insult is something where courts should decide the judgment. Which in fact they did.

I feel some people really want to make Germany more current-usa-free-speach

That picture did not suggest someone is part of the SS but that someone in the Bundeswher might have contacts to SS People. To argue that this should even go in front of a judge is insanity.

Every carnival float in Düsseldorf every year would have to be evaluated by a judge than. Just a RANDOM example: https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/motivwaegen-von-jacques-till...

Freedom of speech includes satire. To ignore that is the exact chilling effect I mentioned.

If it's obvious then the judge says that. did the student got punished? What is the chilling effect if the defendant gets right?

The violation of rights already began with the investigation for what anyone in good faith would consider satire. Even being investigated for this means having to defend oneself, perhaps hire an attorney, in case of this defendant having to have a gofundme equivalent to pay for it. Would you like to go to court for every post you do online? I cannot fathom how you cannot see that this is obviously designed to intimidate students criticizing the Bundeswehr or being violated by a medical examination as a draft preperation.

Young people have to shut up and take it and if they don't, hope your pocketmoney covers attorneys fees!

Just read the context of what happened here, it's easy to find. They did shit like using their mass suriveillance tech to find the phone this OBVIOUS SATIRE was posted from[0]

[0]https://perspektive-online.net/2025/10/anzeige-wegen-meme-es...

The chilling effect is the police knocking on your door, taking all your devices and being under investigation for months on end before you are cleared. If you are lucky.

Schwachkopf-Affäre is a good example of how the right wings try to put in your head censorship and making you happy about having even more censorship in the future. There is a ton of fake stuff/news about it and it is used to block media even more.

I mostly agree with your points, but there’s one form of censorship that exists in Germany today: internet censorship driven by the commercial interests of right holders and implemented by the major internet service providers. In short: illegal streaming sites can be blocked for access.

Some people might disagree that it isn’t a form of censorship, but it fits the bill: blocking access to information on the sole discretion of 3rd party pursuing its own interests.

I am not sure this counts as censorship. But I agree that copyright violations are likely policed (through copyright holders and their lawyers) more strictly in Germany than hate speech.

well you can see some of the 60 minutes piece here:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-online-hate-speech-pros...

basically idea is "go after trolls". who likes trolls? nobody. at a glance should upset no-one. Okay.. now ask.. what does a troll mean to you, mean to me, mean to the people in power. It's a slippery slope you see, the definition of troll inevitably growing broader with time to cover all forms of wrongthink.

Then there's the other part of it, severity of punishment in ratio to a few words typed. Now the interesting thing here is it would be very easy to crack open a neighbor's wifi crypto, forge a MAC address, use a clean system/browser fingerprint such as a thrift store laptop, and now that neighbor you don't like is in hot water. The problem with such rules is ironically, with the intent to stop trolls, in fact supercharge trolling potential

Germany does have piracy policing for torrents, for instance. Access is not blocked though, and thus I don't consider fines for torrenting to be an act of censorship.

Honestly? Good. We can't just let propagandists from Russia or anywhere else ruin our democracies. When I look in comment sections online on mass platforms (think Facebook, Instagram, etc.) the amount of hate is unreal. The sheer quantity doesn't look organic at all. Even though these opinions are certainly shared by many real people, I suspect a lot of it is bots and propaganda. A bit of modern McCarthyism might be necessary.

> A bit of modern McCarthyism might be necessary.

I can't believe I have to write this: McCarthyism was a BAD thing that caused harm to a lot of people and did NOTHING to preserve liberty and freedom.

A lot of people argue today that he was basically correct about Communist infiltration at high levels of the US state department, and the reason we generally think of him as a villain today is because those Communist sympathizers won a political conflict against him and then other Communist sympathizers in American culture-making industries won a cultural conflict against him, which among other consequences is the reason I was taught The Crucible in high school.

Anyway, claims that some group of people are propagandists or that some particular messaging is hateful or fake or propaganda are themselves a type of propaganda. There's no way to evaluate any meta-claim about how we ought to interpret the memes we encounter in society without an object-level understanding of what those memes actually are, which I think is one of the best arguments in favor of radical anti-censorship ideologies.

And this made it to hacker news? Really?? KIT and Correctiv do censorship? Must be 1st April...

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