Hacker News Reader

Some digital matters concern the state and others are private and there should be no sovereignty of the state over private matters.

View on HN

Who will adjudicate private disputes between citizens if not the state?

Not all disputes need to be adjudicated. It's undoubtedly a fact that the German concept of "defamation" primarily relates to situations that should never be adjudicated by any third party.

Genuinely, by far the most common situation where claims of defamation arise in Germany is any less than 5 star review left to a business on google maps.

The good thing is that google in Germany now shows how many reviews were removed due to deflamation. That should be enough for people to make their judgement when checking how many stars a place has

That's just the tip of the iceberg though. Google is the only party who meaningfully communicates this, and it took them years and years to introduce any meaningful transparency.

It's not like this exclusively affects restaurant reviews, every corner of German society is subject to this same evil censorship mechanism.

I completely agree.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com