No we don't. The law is against insulting people, not against "saying stuff we don't like on the internet". The laws predate the internet by decades. The freedom to express your opinion is constitutionally protected, this does not cover all speech acts, in Germany and everywhere (see slander laws). Courts protect this constitutional guarantee, as several recent cases showed. Vigorously enforcing laws against insults and other speech acts that are hostile towards constructive discourse seems to me to be the only way forward when it comes to restoring a semblance of sanity to societal conversation. The social networks by themselves have proven to be utterly incapable of doing so.

The most comprehensive survey on various freedoms in the World that I know of ranks Germany at 94, ahead of France at 90 and the US at 86. (100 is the perfect score)

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2018-table-cou...

Freedom of speech is also a guaranteed right in the German constitution, as it is in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

In every jurisdiction there are limits to the freedom of speech. This applies to the US as well as everywhere else:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

In this case, the content of the insult is a subset of "stuff we don't like" said over the Internet.

Well, not really. On a summary Wikipedia[0] investigation you can find that the UN definition of freedom of speech also contains caveats[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#cite_note-3

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080705115024/http://www2.ohchr...

Can you now explain what is considered hate speech? You've just painted a pretty convincing argument on one side (Freedom of Speech).

Here's the English translation of Section 130: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stg...

Which might help explain what is considered hate speech. These discussions tend to devolve (as all good online discussions do) into the nuance and what-about's. It's the role of the courts to determine that, and it's an ever-evolving collection of legal precedent as a result.

If that standard was applied worldwide, there would be hundreds of lawsuits here, on HN every day (and HN is heavily moderated). It s one of the reasons why no social media can grow in europe.

There are hundreds of attacks every day on HN against people on account of their belonging to a national, racial, or religious group? Guess I've been missing all the spicy comments

parent said "The law is against insulting people"

yeah I know these terrible attacks hurt someones feelings every single day, by that measure half of HN posters should be raided, and the other half deserves to be raided for being spineless spice hating mongrels

Above all, dont insult the German football team.

and politicians

I'm not sure how insulting people can be a crime?

Insulting is explicitly illegal in Germany. In person or internet, doesn't matter.

You’re getting downvoted, but it’s true: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st...

From the link, not every insult is punished :

"Mutual exchange of insults

If an insult is immediately reciprocated, the court may declare one or both of the persons involved in the exchange of insults not to be liable to punishment."

There's a group of people downvoting everything I post, even about c++. No worries

Freedom of speech is not guaranteed in Germany. If it were, holocaust denial wouldn’t get people jailed.

Remind me of a time I was in Germany. I was out with some friends (none of us was german) and one friend joked about hitler, he put a finger over his mustache and did the hitler salute to tell a joke. A guy who was standing next to us came running and said you will get jailed if the police who were close to us see you. So much for freedom to tell a joke. It seems this is the norm, so be careful when in Germany [1].

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40842853

Well it's one of the typical lawyer tricks. There is a paragraph in the constitution that explicitly grants you freedom of speech. There's also others that more or less say you get to jail for saying xyz. Unfortunately, law is not a program that has to compile.

Then put selective enforcement on top and you have a very powerful weapon that gets great PR ("against hate").

No, there is no such paragraph. The German constitution guarantees freedom of opinion - not speech.

So you can’t get prosecuted for disliking someone (and saying so) but you can for saying insulting or untrue (e.g. holocaust denial) things - those are not opinions.

Well you can get convicted for saying you like a joke. That did happen.

Germany has been arresting people for violating their laws against hate speech for 75 years. It’s unsurprising, yet comforting, to find out that they do so when the violations are committed online.

I don't find it comforting, but to each his own.

It wasn't a law 76 years ago yet, but not sure you'd have preferred that Germany.

There are more than two options.

"stuff we don't like on the internet" is a very broad class of speech, far broader than the German law attempts to control.

We would really need to see examples of what the hate speech actually is that caused these people to get raided. Was it that the earth is flat? Was it that they believe Angela Merkel is incompetent? Was it that they want all Syrians and Jews to be rounded up and murdered?

This is the government enforcing the law. If these laws had been in place 100 years ago, maybe my family would still be in Germany.

But they have been in place 100 years ago (before the Nazis came to power). How did that work out?

https://www.jta.org/2020/09/03/opinion/former-aclu-president...

I wonder if the Nazis used the laws to work in their favor and grow in power. If no one could insult the Nazi party then it would be easier for them to grow in power because they could just censor opposing views via the laws.

The Weimar Republic has hate speech laws and attempted to enforce them against Nazis. It merely drove more support to the Nazis.

That... sounds like a Nazi talking point... do you have evidence of that claim?

Don't have a primary source offhand, but here is one researcher for example:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...

"Contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate-speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective public relations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate."

Germany has very different freedom of speech laws than the US. Personally I think the US has it right. You can’t claim free speech but then selectively decide what’s acceptable, politically correct, or moral. It’s a slippery slope.

It is a tough line to walk. However, having seen in our own and other countries’ histories what happens when hatred is allowed to spread unchecked, we have decided that it‘s more important to slightly restrict one right (within tight bounds) than to risk that abusers of that right destroy the very democracy that gave it to them.

> So we're sending police at the homes of people that say stuff we don't like on the internet?

Merely describing it as "stuff we don't like" is either inaccurate or reductionist, in the same way murder could be described as "actions we don't like", or a threatening letter is "some scribbles we don't like", or child pornography is "some movies we don't like".

The German law may be vague (I don't know), but the bar seems to be higher than "stuff we don't like".

Whether it should be censored is a good question, but it does nobody any good to be reductionist about the content of the speech.

Yeah but murder is a very concrete action, while an insult is subjective.

What does 'subjective' mean in this context? That its effects can't be examined? In at least a subset of circumstances, they can be (unless having or not having, say, PTSD, is 'subjective'). Psychological evaluations in the legal system are much like physiological ones.

Let's say somebody has a sensetive finger, and breaking it causes extreme pain, according to that person. Assuming something like the eggshell skull rule still holds, should we dismiss his complaint or treat it as lesser because his pain is 'subjective'?

All harms are subjective, and not all actions result in equal harm to the victim. A concert pianist is arguably harmed more by having his fingers broken than an English teacher is. A professor once said he'd rather someone break his leg instead of a student falsely accuse him of sexual assault.

Well, the thing is, in Germany we‘ve experienced first hand what happens when hatred goes rampant - when criticism turns to ostracism, hateful words to hateful deeds, inflammatory speeches to flame-filled cities.

And I‘m not just talking about Hitler and the Holocaust. Elected representatives of the people, from village mayors to members of parliament, are giving up their office because they can no longer bear the barrage of abuse and intimidation thrown at them. What starts online doesn‘t stay online. The current mayor of Cologne was stabbed the night before her election, a top Hessian state official shot dead in his own garden.

Democracy cannot survive indefinitely under an atmosphere of fear and hatred. If you want more examples, look at the end of the Roman republic, the Weimar republic, the pre-Civil-War United States. Free speech is a precious right. But if you abuse this right to undermine the very democracy that gives it to you, you have thereby forfeited it.

"In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance" - Karl Popper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

We have the concept of the defensive democracy („wehrhafte Demokratie“), which is basically that.

the roman republic is an odd example to bring up. "hate" as we understand it today had very little to do with the transition to empire. it was much more an outcome of internal squabbles among elites and the failure to separate military and political power. ironically, the assassination of caesar may well have hastened the fall of the republic.

> Free speech is a precious right. But if you abuse this right to undermine the very democracy that gives it to you, you have thereby forfeited it.

also, what? we can debate the value of free speech, but it doesn't seem like much of a right if it can be lost so easily.

> "hate" as we understand it today had very little to do with the transition to empire

Fair point. What I was thinking of was the general decline of respect for the (semi-democratic) republican system of governance. The Republic crumbled when politicians stopped using the „constitutional“ means of settling differences and turned to gangs of thugs instead. So I wasn‘t so much thinking of „hate speech“ as of „anti-democratic speech“.

A core criterium of German law is loyalty to the constitution. A number of political rights (the right to free speech, the right to form a political party, the right to hold public office or be employed by the government) are predicated upon the citizen‘s constitutional loyalty, his/her upholding of our democratic values. The idea is that our democracy does not want to aid its enemies in its own destruction, as was partly the case in Weimar.

> it doesn't seem like much of a right if it can be lost so easily

Multiple US states refuse ex-convicts the right to vote. Talking about convicts: prison sentences are nothing but the government stripping you of your right to free movement. Capital punishment is you being denied the right to life. You may object to all three of these forms of punishment, but the fact remains that all countries restrict peoples‘ rights in some way or another. (What constitutes just cause for such a restriction of rights is a fascinating and tough question, but one I unfortunately cannot answer...)

Germany’s laws are very clear that any form of endorsement of Naziism (or any hate speech) is illegal. It has been since the end of WWII. From the US, it looks ridiculous because most of that would be protected by the First Amendment. But in Germany, they really don’t want another Hitler.

They didn't want a Hitler in the first place, e.g. the Beer Hall Putsch. Didn't work out as intended.

>they really don’t want another Hitler

why did Hitler appear in the first place? was it because thats just how germans are...or was there some other reason?

A failing economy from having to pay reparations from WWI was a big part of what started his political career. People were hurt. I’ve heard anecdotal stories of people requesting to be paid in the morning (and given some time off) so they could buy their groceries before hyperinflation made their pay worthless

He knew how to capitalise on peoples‘ fears and prejudices. He gave them common enemies (the democrats, the communists, the Jews), played on their pride, and helped them when they were vulnerable. Then he indoctrinated the hell out of them.

If you give extremism a platform, it will spread.

>why did Hitler appear in the first place?

Because they didn't have laws against hate speech, of course.

Oh wait... they did:

https://www.jta.org/2020/09/03/opinion/former-aclu-president...

You‘re kinda misrepresenting the article. The author/interviewee is not for unlimited speech, she just argues that it should be private organisations doing the censoring rather than the government. (Which quite frankly, I find even scarier - Facebook can‘t be voted out of power within the next four years.)

However the Weimar Republic was extremely politically weak and refused to enforce them.

From the link:

>There were dozens of prosecutions, including successful prosecutions, against Nazis — including Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Sturmer. And it just became a propaganda platform for the Nazis. It got all kinds of attention they otherwise would not have received, and sympathy they otherwise would not have received.

Against minor players, with little public support, they were fearful of doing anything against Hitler or people like Ernst Röhm.