Germany’s Online Crackdowns Inspire the World’s Dictators

A law that was originally meant for phone landlines, that holds the owner of the landline responsible for anything that happens over that landline unless they can actually identify the person who used their landline to commit the crime.

When the Internet became mainstream in Germany, the copyright lobby pushed for that law to be applied to even that. This means: When somebody torrents copyrighted content over your Internet connection, you are liable because it's your connection.

It also means if somebody says something illegal on a platform you host, like in your comments section, you will be held legally liable for those statements unless you can help identify the person who actually left them.

And because Germany has a whole slew of "speech crimes", German companies rarely allow for unmoderated comments on their online platforms.

Some even only allow commenting during certain day times, because that's when moderation crews work, and commenting outside of those times is just disabled.

It's particularly funny when it happens on state-sponsored outlets, which are very selective about what kind of topics they allow commenting.

Often controversial news will be posted at 2 a.m., and then by 7 a.m., the comments will be closed.

Sometimes they apparently close down all discussions when it's time for their lunch break [0]. A common phrase for closing down particularly active comment sections ends up being the rather utilitarian "All relevant things have already been said, we are now closing down the comments".

Germans actually have to pay quite a bit of money to finance such "independent and free" platforms.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/Flm38TL