
Germany’s Online Crackdowns Inspire the World’s Dictators - rickncliff
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/06/germany-online-crackdowns-inspired-the-worlds-dictators-russia-venezuela-india/
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deogeo
> The law imposes so-called intermediary liability for social media networks
> with over 2 million registered users. Any content, which is “manifestly
> unlawful” must be removed in a time frame of 24 hours. For all other
> “unlawful” content, the deadline is seven days. Failure to remove illegal
> content is punishable by fines of up to 50 million euros, about $55 million.

I.e. remove everything anyone complains about, or risk a 50 million fine. No
country with such a law can be considered even remotely 'free'.

~~~
freeflight
It's just the extension of an already quite questionable liability situation
that results from the Störerhaftung.

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](https://imgur.com/a/Flm38TL)

