What content bans does Europe have? /Confused European
(1) https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/hamburg-wohnungsdurch... (2) https://www.justiz.bayern.de/media/images/behoerden-und-geri... (3) https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article6996cb47fc148...
These are examples that spontaneously come to my mind. So I can not talk for whatever country you live in but Germany has a problem about being able to express opinions.
Isn't it convenient how all posts that say something that rhymes with "You can get in trouble in EU country X for just doing Y." The "just" is doing a lot of concealed lifting? None of your three links actually support your assertion.
(2) The corresponding prosecutor made clear that his house was raided for calling the politician stupid and NOT for anything else. You would have known that if you would have read the document I linked to. To quote it:
Wegen des Tatverdachts einer gegen Personen des politischen Lebens gerichteten
Beleidigung gem. §§ 185, 188, 194 StGB erfolgte am vergangenen Dienstag, 12.11.2024, eine
richterlich angeordnete Durchsuchung der Wohnung des Beschuldigten durch Polizeibeamte
der Kriminalpolizei Schweinfurt
Due to suspicion of an offence of insulting persons in political life
pursuant to Sections 185, 188, 194 of the German Criminal Code (StGB), a
judicially ordered search of the accused's apartment was carried out last Tuesday, November 12, 2024, by police officers
from the Schweinfurt Criminal Investigation Department.
So, yes my links support my assertion.
According to Wikipedia it was an answer to the following tweet https://twitter.com/AndyGrote/status/1399001436973899780
The one who got in trouble was ultimately the dick, not the one who called him that....
The arrest wasn't made for this but for the insulting of a politican. Stop lying. The press has been correcting this case for months.
I don't think foreign propaganda was ever exempt from freedom of speech here in Europe (except the countries and regimes which lacked free speech, of course), it just wasn't much of a problem before the internet made opinions so easy to broadcast.
It’s not just Russian propaganda, but now it is conveniently used as a blanket cover to sanction even EU citizens (see case of German journalist Hüseyin Doğru, whose only connection to Russia was a hosting of his pro-Palestinian outlet on a platform affiliated with RT).
It does lend credibility to the blocks when it's US companies trying to dodge fines while mishandling PII. The suggestion of using a US freedom gov to dodge US-based self-censorship is as ironic as it is stupid when the real solution is pay the fine and handle the data properly.
You're aware news sites are used to push agenda, some more than others, but that's half the interest of seeing what they push. And sometimes the more fringe have stories on what should be news but don't make it to mainstream media channels.
...anyway I'm more a believer in assuming people have a brain and can figure stuff out vs banning sites, both have danger to them but censorship seems the bigger danger to me.
dig @192.168.2.1 rt.com
; <<>> DiG 9.18.39-0ubuntu0.24.04.2-Ubuntu <<>> @192.168.2.1 rt.com
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 64757
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;rt.com. IN A
;; Query time: 30 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.2.1#53(192.168.2.1) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Fri Feb 20 09:17:58 UTC 2026
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 35In Italy for example RT website is blocked.
EDIT: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
There seems to be a manufactured narrative from the US right how "Europe" is somehow doing large scale censorship.
Also the world's largest library is banned in Germany.
Closest thing I could find to library banned in Germany was a collection of pirated material, which was blocked at a DNS level, meaning many users bypass the ban accidentally, and anyone who wants to can trivially use a different DNS.
I mean I'm probably more in favour of digital piracy than the next guy, but I had completely missed that were calling copyright protection censorship now?
I cannot vouch for its accuracy but I thought it was interesting.
1) Catalan Referendum Website Seizures (2017)
Spanish courts ordered ISPs to block dozens of pro-independence domains and mirror sites during the referendum. Civil Guard units physically entered data centers to seize servers tied to the Catalan government’s digital voting infrastructure.
2) GitHub Repository Takedown (2017)
Spain obtained a court order forcing GitHub to remove a repository that mirrored referendum voting code and site information, extending censorship beyond Spanish-hosted domains.
3) Rapper Convictions for Online Lyrics
Spanish rapper Valtònyc was convicted for tweets and lyrics deemed to glorify terrorism and insult the monarchy; he fled the country and fought extradition in Belgium for years.
⸻
France
4) Blocking of Protest Pages During Yellow Vests (2018–2019)
Authorities requested removals of Facebook pages and livestreams tied to the Yellow Vest protests, citing incitement and public order concerns.
5) Court-Ordered Removal of Election Content (2019 EU Elections)
French judges used expedited procedures under election-period misinformation law to order removal of allegedly false political claims within 48 hours.
6) Prosecution of Political Satire as Hate Speech
Several activists were fined or prosecuted for online posts targeting religious or ethnic groups in explicitly political contexts, even where framed as satire.
⸻
Germany
7) Mass Police Raids Over Social Media Posts
German police have conducted coordinated nationwide dawn raids targeting individuals accused of posting illegal political speech under hate-speech laws.
8) Removal of Opposition Content Under NetzDG
Platforms removed thousands of posts from nationalist or anti-immigration political actors within 24 hours to avoid heavy fines under NetzDG enforcement pressure.
9) Criminal Convictions for Holocaust Commentary Online
Individuals have received criminal penalties for online statements denying or relativizing Nazi crimes, even when framed in broader political debate contexts.
⸻
United Kingdom
10) Police Visits Over Controversial Tweets
British police have conducted “non-crime hate incident” visits to individuals’ homes over political tweets, creating official records despite no prosecution.
11) Arrests for Offensive Political Posts
Individuals have been arrested under public communications laws for posts criticizing immigration or religion in strongly worded terms.
12) Removal of Campaign Content Under Electoral Rules
Election regulators required digital platforms to remove or restrict political ads that failed to meet transparency requirements during active campaigns.
⸻
Italy
13) Enforcement of “Par Condicio” Silence Online
During mandated pre-election silence periods, online political content—including posts by candidates—has been ordered removed or fined.
14) Criminal Defamation Charges Against Bloggers
Italian bloggers critical of politicians have faced criminal defamation prosecutions for investigative posts during election cycles.
⸻
Finland
15) Conviction of Sitting MP for Facebook Posts
Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen was prosecuted for Bible-based comments posted online regarding sexuality and religion; although ultimately acquitted, the criminal process itself was lengthy and high-profile.
⸻
Sweden
16) Convictions for Anti-Immigration Facebook Posts
Swedish courts have convicted individuals for Facebook comments criticizing immigration policy when deemed “agitation against a population group.”
⸻
Netherlands
17) Criminal Case Against Opposition Politician
Dutch politician Geert Wilders was convicted (without penalty) for campaign-rally remarks later amplified online, deemed discriminatory.
⸻
Austria
18) Rapid Court Orders Against Political Posts
Austria’s updated online hate-speech regime enabled expedited court orders compelling removal of allegedly unlawful political speech within days.
⸻
Belgium
19) Prosecution of Political Party Messaging
Members of the Vlaams Belang party have faced legal sanctions for campaign messaging shared online deemed racist or discriminatory.
⸻
Switzerland
20) Criminal Fines for Referendum Campaign Speech
Swiss activists have faced criminal fines for online referendum messaging judged to violate anti-discrimination law during highly contentious votes.
And of course, once it's illegal to agitate against violence, we just have to redefine violence: for instance, posting about Nazis puts them in danger, and they're all white, so clearly you're a racist for opposing Nazis.
These aren't hypothetical examples: the people defending Free Speech have watched these slippery slopes get pulled out again and again. Misgendering a trans person is a "hate crime", reporting on the location of gestapo agents is "inciting violence", protesting against the state is "terrorism"
And fundamentally, this is a lever that gets wielded by whoever is in power: even if you agree with the Left censoring Nazi salutes, are you equally comfortable with the Right censoring child mutilation sites (also known as "Trans resources")?
SURELY "child mutilation" is "obviously harmless" to ban, right?
Maybe Americans should take a break from criticizing the EU and fix their own shit first. It's incredibly frustrating to constantly see far right goons swing around "freedom of speech" as if that term hasn't been a fig leaf for ages. In the US, if you do something that the powers that be dislike that is covered by freedom of speech, they'll manufacture something else to hit you with. At least here in the EU, when you get investigated for something that freedom of expression covers, you'll at least get acquitted eventually.
They've already fined X heavily for lacking transparency, like not providing a database of advertisers or allowing researchers to access internal data to evaluate misinformation concerns. The EU has threatened that if they need to they may ban or limit X.
Musk and conservatives view X as a critical tool to spread their preferred ideology, and Musk has shown he's not beyond algorithmic and UX manipulation to achieve desired outcomes.
For example, UK police track what they consider to be undesirable "non-crime" speech, build databases of people, and intimidate them for these non crimes (knock on their doors, invite them to come to police station, advise them not to say such things, etc). This is quite a new thing, within the past ~10 years.
There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case. They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%.
Even the conviction rate, even if you say yes there are laws to prohibit certain speech, how far is too far? Are these kinds of laws and convictions needed? Why don't all other countries need them? Why didn't UK need them 20 years ago when there was still internet and social media? Is it not concerning to you that we're told this kind of action is required to hold society together? I'm not saying that calls to violence don't happen or should be tolerated, but if it is not a lie that arresting thousands of people for twitter posts and things is necessary to keep society from breaking down then it seems like putting a bandaid on top of a volcano. It's certainly not developing a resilient, anti-fragile society, quite the opposite IMO.
Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
Actually they feel like they might secretly be the fifty first state!
Such as?
> Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
Horrible underground extremist? Not so much. More likely just someone who consumes a very particular slice of media that puts a dishonest (at best) spin on situations like this.
> Such as?
That was the only thing in my comment you took issue with? Great, that's easy to clear up because there's a few around. Here's one
https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/leeds-news/yorkshire-man-a...
Arrested for saying "F--- Palestine. F--- Hamas. F--- Islam. Want to protest? F--- off to Muslim country and protest."
> Horrible underground extremist? Not so much. More likely just someone who consumes a very particular slice of media that puts a dishonest (at best) spin on situations like this.
Hmm. Was your previous post a dishonest (at best) spin on it too? That would be consistent with your claim if you are a consumer of a very particular slice of media and did not know you can find articles from a whole range of publications about this stuff easily on the internet.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/19/arresting-pa...
https://www.forbes.com.au/news/world-news/people-are-being-t...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2922w73e1o (Online speech laws need to be reviewed after Linehan arrest, says Streeting)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/13/uk-decision-to-ban-...
https://www.politico.eu/article/freedom-speech-suspicion-bri...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/world/europe/graham-lineh...
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/palestine-action-ruling...
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/03/uk/uk-farage-free-speech-...
https://www.fire.org/news/uk-government-issues-warning-think...
https://www.foxnews.com/world/shocking-cases-reveal-britains...
You really don't need to be some obscure basement dweller to have any kind of vague inkling that something might be a little on the nose in the proverbial state of Denmark.
If you come from a common law context the whole idea might seem strange.
Regardless of my personal thoughts on this (complicated), simply putting "many" in front of "Europeans" does a lot to diminish further alienation of those who don't, helping you achieve your goals. It takes 0.5 seconds.
Do they? Or is it being pushed upon them? And why is it "the key thing" here?
> Thus lawmakers are acting to find laws which encapsulate these.
I suspect it has been the reverse, the ruling class desperately wants those powers and if the common people are now in favor of them it is more than likely because of intensive campaigns from their governments and corporations to change their minds.
> In Germany, we have some simple ones surrounding using Nazi symbols and speech. These rules generally work well in our civil law context. Civil law usually is rather broad strokes and there might be cases where something injust happens which requires tuning laws.
Some laws existing does not mean some other laws won't be unjust. Or that legislated laws will always be right and not require "some tuning".
> If you come from a common law context the whole idea might seem strange.
The different systems of law don't seem all that strange to me at least, but the thread you are replying to is discussing censorship in the European nation of the UK.
Further, what we are discussing involves executive police powers (intimidation, arrests, compiling lists), as well as legislated laws, so it is not really just some quirk of common law at all.
Unless you understand concepts like "Natural Rights" the idea of a government not being able to curtail what you say will remain completely foreign to you.
You went from a military dictatorship to an unstable republic to a fascist state, then you split into military occupation zones, and then one of your military occupation zones annexed the other, the militaries left but you kept the laws, and now you arrest people for saying "from the river to the sea".
Using your German-ness to talk to anyone else about freedom or human dignity is patently ridiculous. If you have an ideological point to make, make it, but the whole "as a German" angle just does not hold water. "As a German" your history shows you don't understand this.
Your concept of Freedom of Speech is much closer to the Mainland Chinese model than an Anglo one.
Nobody is perfect, but Germans have learned a lot in the last century and a half. One of the things is that Freedom of Speech doesn't deserve the pedestal that primarily US Americans put it on. It has boundaries and one of those is calling for the displacement of an entire nation.
You make it sound like that Germany is just a puppet without its own mind, but in reality it is just some 80m people all with their own mind, history and education. The reality is that Germans are more aware of their history and the impact seemingly small decisions can have on the life of millions. That's why I talk about the German-ness, because many other countries can't or don't want to understand the weight of responsibility which arises from being the perpetrator of two world wars and the holocaust.
All you learned in the last centuries and a half is that you dont have the logistics to fight massive wars. You did not abandon anything due to your own enlightenment, you abandoned it because of massive foreign military interventions, where every single one of your newspaper, radio and television stations were replaced by your military occupiers.
The worst part about your Schuldstolz is that... the regime who did the most to end yours was even less moral and killed even more people than your own. Meaning you aren't even the best at being awful.
So no, I do not care what you have to see about freedom "as a German". You were militarily, ideologically and mentally conquered. Lecturing Anglos is this is just reflecing back our own beliefs but distorted with a German mindset that has no history or tradition of freedom of speech.
Never heard that word before. And I don't think I am lecturing you about something you should do. I was just talking about why Germans in their own free country are choosing to make decisions about their own laws.
If you feel like we are missing something about freedom of speech, that's fair enough. You are entitled to your opinion. What is strange to me is that Americans (and you as somebody from NZ) are starting to lecture us on that we are being censored by our government. Which in itself is ridiculous and even when explaining why we are preferring the rules we have, we get attacked for it.
Germans aren't mentally conquered, this is just bullshit. We have the same freedom to think what we want as all other Europeans. Things are also evolving, the second world war is so long ago, that very few Europeans were first hand involved. What we considered American values (I don't think the Anglo sphere is very united in these) has also rapidly changed. Americans no longer believe in multi-lateralism and shared values, so not sure what reflection you are alluding to.
Your views on the war are also not very informed. West Germany and East Germany were vastly differently handled by the occupation forces. While for East Germany your talking points of a total replacement it true, in West Germany many of the old elites had to be put back in power to aid the western allies in propping up Germany against the Russians. It took a lot of counter culture to fight those brown remains.
Last, I don't know where you take the energy and insights to say that we have no history of XYZ, but it just isn't true.
Human dignity is not foreign to me at all, I just don't believe a life where the state protects your feelings from words, and that dictates what you may and may not talk about is not a dignified one.
Your argument is similar to saying that we shouldn't have rules when driving cars. "Why life cannot be dignified if I have to observe stop signs."
In every are of life there are balances to be struck. I am sure your country has rules for slandering individuals (because most have). What's the difference to also having rules against slandering entire people?
What is your evidence to that claim?
I think it is actually not easy to assume that position, as evidenced by vast numbers of Europeans who do not assume that position. I think that it is in fact far easier (as a majority, white, employed, etc.), to go through life believing your government will solve everything and protect your feelings from being hurt by hearing what other people think. I just think it is an undignified existence.
> Your argument is similar to saying that we shouldn't have rules when driving cars. "Why life cannot be dignified if I have to observe stop signs."
I can see how bewildering this is for you, but my "argument" is also quite different in important ways.
> In every are of life there are balances to be struck. I am sure your country has rules for slandering individuals (because most have).
Adjudicating disputes between private parties is clearly one of the real roles of government.
> What's the difference to also having rules against slandering entire people?
I'm not sure if you are being rhetorical and actually want me to list the differences because you are unaware of them? Civil actions brought by private parties are different from government censorship and criminalization of speech. And I can be sued in civil court for what I say, I never said or even hinted that this should be disallowed that seems to be a strawman you have made up.
I don't think it should be easy to be found liable for damage if you tell the truth or give your opinion though.
What about you? Do you think calling AfD voters in general racists or extremists or selfish or xenophobic should be censored and criminalized by your government?
Isn't the conviction rate the number of people convicted divided by the number charged, not the number arrested?