(Attention: strong language in eighth paragraph)
* Law setting big fines for social media came in on Jan. 1
* Bild says has had inverse effect, helped anti-migrant party
* Justice minister says law protects freedom of opinion
By Michelle Martin
BERLIN, Jan 4 (Reuters) – A new law meant to curtail hate speech on social media in Germany is stifling free speech and making martyrs out of anti-immigrant politicians whose posts are deleted, the top-selling Bild newspaper said on Thursday.
The law which took effect on Jan. 1 can impose fines of up to 50 million euros ($60 million) on sites that fail to remove hate speech promptly. Twitter has deleted anti-Muslim and anti-migrant posts by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and blocked a satirical account that parodied Islamophobia.
“Please spare us the thought police!” read a headline in Wednesday’s Bild above an article that called the law a “sin” against freedom of opinion enshrined in Germany’s constitution.
The law requires social media sites to delete or block obviously criminal content within 24 hours but Bild Editor-in-Chief Julian Reichelt said it could be applied against anything and anyone since there was no definition of what was “manifestly unlawful” in most cases.
news.trust.org/item/20180104113147-as99y
In Germany, the freedom of speech has officially ended
Germany implements new internet hate speech crackdown
A new German law named NetzDG that will force social media sites to delete offensive content has come into effect with the New Year. There are plenty of critics on both the far-right and among internet activists.
Facebook, Twitter, and Google will need to get used to new rules in Germany from Monday, as a new law comes into effect designed to clamp down on hate speech and illegal content on the internet.
January 1 marks the end of the transitional period of the “network enforcement law” (NetzDG), which forces any internet platform with more than 2 million users to implement more efficient and effective ways to report and delete potentially illegal content. Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram will all come under the new law, though professional networks like LinkedIn and Xing are expressly excluded, as are messaging services like WhatsApp.
www.dw.com/en/germany-implements-new-internet-hate-speech-crackdown/a-41991590
…fascist idiots….fighting against the incoming tide of technology and their loss of power with buckets of totalitarian, Nazi-Like laws. Screw the corrupt German government. I hope the German people legally drag them out of their offices, legally charge and convict them for treason…and then start legally hanging them around Berlin.
RJ O’Guillory
Maybe this will finally wake Germans up and start them thinking; what does the government not want us to know? Perhaps they are hiding the real facts of the “Holocaust”?
Free speech ended the day Germans could not say “I don’t believe 6 million died”
And it’s not just Germans who are muzzled.
Freedom of speech never really existed in Germany or Europe post-WW2. Hell, it didn’t really exist prior to that anywhere which is one of the rarities of America’s foundation. It’s because it was widely used as a weapon for either side who took power to clamp down on their opponents using government force that it even became a thing in the Constitution, so it’s not really unusual and completely within the bounds of historical norms.
Hell, even in the U.S. we really don’t have freedom of speech either. Who cares whether you get your head caved in or locked up when you can’t get a job because the social justice warriors and highly politically charged corporations will treat you worse than a felon? At least in jail you get a roof over your head and 3 hot meals. Liberals and communists before them took actual pleasure in announcing their goal is to starve the families of their opposition through this effect and they take sinister glee in creating an environment where you can’t get employed and have no legal course for staying employed when you exert your freedom of speech even if it’s outside the work environment and disconnected from the work environment completely.
At least there is something to be said about honesty when the government crushes peoples nuts compared to the cowards who use everything else but the government to do so under false pretenses as to why they’re in the right. An enemy you can see is better than the ones who hide in the shadows.