In Spain, you as a website admin can be found liable for unlawful messages left by your users too. So it's not like this is unexpectedly repressive for me.

A verdict that shows so: http://www.asesoriayempresas.es/jurisprudencia/JURIDICO/1959...

Not really, it says: "Conocimiento efectivo por la demandada del contenido de los comentarios alojados por terceras personas en su web. Remisión de fax en el que se advierte de la existencia de estas comunicaciones lesivas al honor del demandante: Al rehusar este fax la demandada incumple su deber de diligencia."

Which translates: "Effective knowledge by the plaintiff of the stored messages by third-parties on his website. Fax receiving in which [the admin] was informed of the lascivious messages to the plaintiff. By refusing the FAX the defendant breaches his duty of diligence"

So this case was about sexual comments against a specific person for which the owner of the site refused to delete such comments; so little to nothing to do with censoring messages against the state.

Also true for Finland.

Also true for Germany.

Also true for basically every Gulf country, but slightly more repressive.

I presume that "unlawful" is a bit more circumscribed in Spain than in China.

Taking the article's example, would you be liable for ranting about a drunk driving checkpoint being a shakedown?

Well, then, owners, admins and mods just need to be anonymous and untraceable. Users too, of course. So yeah, Tor or something stronger :)

I don't think it's about anonymous chats, though (AFAIK they're were made illegal in China for some time, just like anonymous commenting). Probably about chats where users know each other. And it doesn't work if there's a snitch among the peers.

For the smaller casual "circle of acquaintances (relatives, friends, coworkers, gaming teammates, etc)" chats, there should be no owner, though - small non-public invite-only communities work perfectly well without administration. This doesn't solve "poster is responsible" but it solves "owner is responsible".

For larger or open chats - yes, the owner should be someone pseudonymous (or just a robot).