From my limited time in Germany, and from my few German friends, I do not believe there is a "high false-positive rate" and they do not "rightfully fear that the system can be abused".

Any system can be abused, but they are not in "fear" of that. They generally support the idea that Nazi ideals need to be curtailed given the atrocities committed to millions of people.

Obviously, and as indicated, this is my very small circle of acquaintances. Hardly a national poll.

Once you create a list of things that can and cannot be said you have that list on hand. You might have the best intentions about what's on that list but it's better to not have that list at all because it's completely subjective what should and should not be on that list.

It was a local politician abusing his power who is being investigated for that power. It has nothing to do with banning hateful imagery.

Also, I think many people, Americans in particular, overestimate the ability of "market systems" (i.e. "the marketplace of ideas) to self-regulate or the desirability of the results of that self-regulation.

It's one thing to let Nazis march down the street in Illinois, where they are a small group of pariahs with no hope of power; it's quite another to let them march down a street in a place where they've had power and used it to bad ends (and can be assumed to have significant residual support).

While this isn't a specific case of censoring something glorifying or endorsing Nazism directly, they think that their own citizens cannot see such material out of fear that it will inspire people to become militaristic. While the goal of being anti-war and anti-nazi is noble and worthwhile, a lot of things get swept up in the effort to curtail as much of it as possible.

The situation has improved a lot these days after an amendment in 2003. There is an industry board (USK) giving age recommendations (0+, 6+, 12+, 16+, 18+) and if a game has been rated 18+, shops will not sell it to minors. Importantly, if a game has been rated by this board, it can no longer be put onto the index maintained by that Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors. So the far-reaching restrictions against advertisement no longer apply.

I'm an American and generally free speech / free communications absolutist, but it's weird to be taking issue with this in the existing context of Germany. From my own American perspective, I also consider the zwastika to be in a similar boat as the swastika. The free speech angle merely means that my personal judgement will inform my personal relations, rather than the boot of the state being involved.

That is not enough to base a post on.

There's a restaurant down the street from me that's real trash. I sense that it's not doing well, since it's always empty. Do I need to go run a survey before I could share that?

Yes, that is indeed what it is. I wasn't using weasel words to claim my assertion was based on empirical evidence. I'm just sharing my own perception and I'm a little bothered by the implication that I somehow have to provide citations in order to simply share my perspective.

You've made a really strong claim that they have an "incredibly high false positive rate".

Then you've just thrown "I sense" in front of it all to make it okay that you're basing that on zero evidence.

If you think they've got an "incredibly" high false positive rate you should go do the work to have some kind of factual evidence to base that on.

Yes, that's being used as a contextual qualifier. "I sense" = this is my personal opinion, not an assertion of objective fact.

>"If you think they've got an "incredibly" high false positive rate you should go do the work to have some kind of factual evidence to base that on."

Why? Do you have some evidence this is a bad thing? If you think my use of "I sense" is harmful, you should go do the work and provide some factual evidence to back up your position. I see no citations.

well, if you believe science has any value then we might agree on this <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method>

Truth be told, though, I feel like your statement is insinuating that I somehow don't value science. Or, that I've never heard of the scientific method?

My main point of frustration is how people are expecting a level of rigor that isn't congruent with the medium. This is a forum, not an academic journal or a policy-making body. I don't know if "reverse gish gallop" has been coined yet, but I sense that when one finds someone they disagree with they can adopt the mindset that everything that person has said must be backed up with a citation. Virtually no one is equipped to perform a dissertation defense on a forum post, so demanding an ever increasing list of evidence is an effective means of discrediting the content without actually engaging with it.

People holding opinions without any evidence is a modern plague, you shouldn't be defending it.

Just do some work to have a basis for your opinions. It is intellectually lazy not to do so, and you've got the Internet, Google and Wikipedia to help you get started, you don't even need to leave your couch and physically go down to a Library.

What's your basis for this? Show me your work.

How can it be a valid objection if you've provided zero evidence to back it up? You are the one who decries a lack of supporting evidence, yet you've provided none in any of your replies so far. Particularly: "holding opinions without any evidence is a modern plague" because it looks a lot like a personal opinion of yours with zero presented evidence to back it up.

It wouldn't need a name if it wasn't common.

And here's a book on it for you:

https://www.callingbullshit.org/

In any event, this is getting more and more contentious and we should probably all just leave things be.

NB: don't take it personally or feel bad, it's just a random interweb guy's disagreement!