Why did they do so? Reddit is a private company, and it most probably had to make a decision between introducing mechanisms to comply with the German law and having Reddit blocked in Germany. Why...
Exemplary
Why did they do so?
Reddit is a private company, and it most probably had to make a decision between introducing mechanisms to comply with the German law and having Reddit blocked in Germany.
Why is this problematic?
First, Germany is one of approximately 200 countries in the world. Just imagine that Iran might make similar demands (the population of Iran is similar to that of Germany, and the share of young people, who are the target group for Reddit growth, is much higher in Iran than in Germany).
Second, this time Reddit users were not informed at all—not via r/announcements, not via some less frequented but still official subreddit.
Can Tildes be affected by NetzDG?
Most of the reasons that can be reported for are already disallowed here: hate speech, illegal activities, threats, etc. Also, things like insult and intimidation fall under “being an asshole.”
The biggest problem for Tildes is § 166 in its “non-confessional organisations” part. For example, Reddit is (most likely—I am not a German lawyer) a non-confessional organisation, and this very comment is critical of Reddit, so it can be perceived as an insult. Therefore, this comment violates NetzDG (most probably).
(§ 201a can be a substantial problem as well as the German definition of “the most personal sphere” is much broader than definitions of privacy in most countries.)
Edit: a better formulation of the Tildes-related question is “Can Tildes be ever affected by NetzDG?” as NetzDG only applies to social networks with 2 million or more users in Germany, so even if some content here can be claimed to violate the German Criminal Code, Tildes do not have to provide means to report such content yet.
Edit: organisations mentioned in § 166 do not include social networks. However, § 185 - 187 (insult, defamation, slander) apply generally. The correct term in § 201a is “intimate privacy,” which is much narrower than privacy in general. Thanks @vektor below.
I'll correct a few misconceptions if you let me; not a lawyer, but german. 166 requires the writing or statement to be capable of disturbing public peace. You can still insult and criticize, just...
Exemplary
I'll correct a few misconceptions if you let me; not a lawyer, but german.
166 requires the writing or statement to be capable of disturbing public peace. You can still insult and criticize, just don't trigger violence with your words. There's still a vague line here (what's fighting words and what's just oversensitivity?) but it's waaaay further back. It also only applies to organisations of religion or worldview, the translation is plain terrible there. It also requires insults, which I think is a higher bar than you make it out to be, at least as long as you're not calling a policeman "dude".
201a is a defense against child porn, revenge porn and other non consentual imagery (or publication thereof) that depict sickness, death, sexuality, intimate family relationship details and the like. A higher bar than just 'private' it seems. Also, it's necessary for the image to either depict the person in a helpless state or be taken in a private space (apartment or other space protected from view). Exceptions for legitimate use cases may apply (science, art, news).
I'm interested in hearing why you think "most personal sphere" is so much broader than privacy.
I managed to find the official (but never announced in any public way—was it announced in Germany?) Reddit page here. Indeed, organisations mentioned in § 166 do not include social networks....
I managed to find the official (but never announced in any public way—was it announced in Germany?) Reddit page here. Indeed, organisations mentioned in § 166 do not include social networks. However, § 185 - 187 are still there and could apply.
As for § 201a, I was indeed misled by the translation. The wording on the Reddit page is “intimate privacy.”
This is not an argument in good faith, which is silly as there are so many other, better reasons to be against this. Reddit's motivation comes from money as any company, and its revenue comes from...
the population of Iran is similar to that of Germany, and the share of young people, who are the target group for Reddit growth, is much higher in Iran than in Germany
This is not an argument in good faith, which is silly as there are so many other, better reasons to be against this. Reddit's motivation comes from money as any company, and its revenue comes from advertisement. Advertisement money is based on the associated revenue gain by the company buying the ads, and the average German user has FAR more spending power than the average Iranian user, to the point Iran is eclipsed pretty much entirely and the very idea that you would get the same reaction to an Iranian law as you did a German one is ridiculous to the point of taking offence.
I wonder about this. Sites outside Germany have no obligation to implement this law. Would Germany go and literally ban every site not implementing it?
having Reddit blocked in Germany.
I wonder about this. Sites outside Germany have no obligation to implement this law. Would Germany go and literally ban every site not implementing it?
Note the edit. It only applies to social networks with more than 2M german registered users. That's not that many sites. Facebook mostly, but probably also tumblr, reddit and twitter, but that's...
Note the edit. It only applies to social networks with more than 2M german registered users. That's not that many sites. Facebook mostly, but probably also tumblr, reddit and twitter, but that's about it. All of these likely interested in their customers enough to follow the law.
Excellent find on your first edit, that's a very useful caveat. The law is targeted at facebook and the likes anyways, so no reason to impose sanctions on small networks. At 2 million german users...
Excellent find on your first edit, that's a very useful caveat. The law is targeted at facebook and the likes anyways, so no reason to impose sanctions on small networks. At 2 million german users in a FOSS project, implementing the respective stuff wouldn't be that big a hurdle anymore. You're of course correct in that StGB is still enforcable on tildes (at least in germany - i.e. against german users) before that, just that tildes has no obligation to preemptively help enforcement.
Also, another caveat: 185-187 seem to only apply to natural persons or possibly groups thereof, so no organizations or companies. That's an interesting one. If memory serves, there was a case where a person displaying "ACAB" on their clothing was tried for insult, but that didn't go that far, because the statement ACAB was assumed to refer to an organization, thus no individual cop would have to consider themselves insulted; thus no insult.
On the other hand, there's a case in Austria where someone called a policeman "Oida" ("Alter", "old one", used pretty much like "Dude!") and was fined 100€ for it. The mind boggles. Austrians... ;)
Here's a list of all the reasons, you can report for, translated to English in this comment: § 86 - Dissemination of propaganda material by unconstitutional organisations § 86a - Use of symbols of...
Here's a list of all the reasons, you can report for, translated to English in this comment:
§ 86 - Dissemination of propaganda material by unconstitutional organisations
§ 86a - Use of symbols of unconstitutional organisations
§ 89a - Preparation of a serious act of violence endangering the state
§ 91 - Instructions for the perpetration of a serious act of violence endangering the state
§ 100a - Treacherous Counterfeiting
§ 111 - Public provocation to commit criminal offences
§ 126 - Disturbance of public peace through threats of criminal offences
§§ 129 - 129b - Formation of criminal organisations
§ 130 - Incitement to racial hatred
§ 131 - Depiction of violence
§ 140 - Reward and approval of criminal offences
§ 166 - Insults to denominations, religious communities and philosophical and non-confessional organisations
§ 184b in conjunction with § 184d - Distribution, acquisition and possession of child pornography writings
§ 185 - 187 - insult, slander, defamation
§ 201a - Violation of the most personal sphere of life through image recording
§ 241 - Intimidation
§ 269 - Falsification of data relevant to evidence
The redditor who translated these reasons notes: “Keep in mind, these all have a more in-depth definition in their respective paragraphs. I am also not a legal expert and have probably made mistakes during translation.”
Many if not most of reddit's failures and choices that ultimately negatively impact its users are pretty familiar to me, but I wish I knew more about how this one worked/works out. In other words:...
Many if not most of reddit's failures and choices that ultimately negatively impact its users are pretty familiar to me, but I wish I knew more about how this one worked/works out. In other words: what is the motivation for reddit to implement an option like this? Does the German government contact reddit and request that what we're looking at be put in place? In what capacity does reddit handle reports filed under that category? Or are they just forwarded to German officials?
I was aware that Germany has a rather stringent stance in affairs of speech (and copyright) but I can't imagine being the person willing to sign off on something like this - on reddit's side or within that country's government. Though the screenshot that the op includes the line:
"A new german law named NetzDG that will force social media sites to delete offensive content has come into effect with the New Year. There are plenty of critics on both the far-right and among internet activists"
To me, this isn't a "left versus right" issue. I feel this represents another small notch into what the Internet is - or otherwise used to be - for people. I take a very Picard-esque opinion (another) to the topic of freedom of speech. It's a value, not just a legal right - at least in my mind.
The law only applies to social networks with more than 2M german registered users, so the govt. could contact the affected sites individually. The alternative would be fines or being blocked from...
The law only applies to social networks with more than 2M german registered users, so the govt. could contact the affected sites individually. The alternative would be fines or being blocked from germany, I'd wager.
I think the law was specifically implemented to get a grip on hate speech on facebook - right wing hatespeech, mostly; that might explain the right-left divide.
It might just be me, but the laws around free speech seem rather common sense to me. It is my impression that what's criminalized is not your opinion or expression thereof; rather, the way you choose to express it. Beyond that, germany follows a philosophy similar to that of tildes: Low tolerance for things that could ruin the community/country for everyone. Germany reserves the right to proactively persecute enemies of the constitution, and human dignity, democracy and rule of law cannot legally be abolished. After WW2, the german constitution was designed to prevent that from happening again. Hence the prohibitions on nazi salutes and swastikas. (again, exceptions apply) A common counter argument is that nazis shouldn't be forced into hiding, so one can debate them and convince them or at least others, I fail to see how that is prevented by the respective laws. Their ideology is legal, their opinions are; the only difference is that their opinions don't give them a free pass to commit other crimes.(edit: the laws you're thinking of are likely more nuanced than you think, reporting on them is usually blown out of proportion internationally)
A criticism of this law I do however accept and in fact support is that it encourages the social networks to be the judge and DA in the question of what is legal or not. But I don't see an obvious solution. If the author is in germany, the law could give them a way to acknowledge the complaint, but basically say "yup, I said that, I stand by it, it's legal, sue me if you want; do not take my statement down", absolving the network of it's responsibility(kinda like a DMCA counter-claim, I think). But that wouldn't hold much weight if the author isn't reachable by german law enforcement.
Reddit has a lot of support categories that I didn't know about until recently, actually- I had no idea that there was a moderator complaint option on their website, so I went and took a look. The...
Reddit has a lot of support categories that I didn't know about until recently, actually- I had no idea that there was a moderator complaint option on their website, so I went and took a look. The full list includes "investigations" (whatever that means), netzDG, and suicide/self-harm report (which is interesting in and of itself since they started simply telling mods to refer users to https://reddit.com/r/suicidewatch and reporting to the mod's local authorities) along with many others.
This isn't a new development, at least it hasn't happened in the past few months, it's just something they comply with to remain legal there, which still means it can do bad, but it means that more users have access. It's definitely something that should be pushed back against at the German government level, though.
Why did they do so?
Reddit is a private company, and it most probably had to make a decision between introducing mechanisms to comply with the German law and having Reddit blocked in Germany.
Why is this problematic?
First, Germany is one of approximately 200 countries in the world. Just imagine that Iran might make similar demands (the population of Iran is similar to that of Germany, and the share of young people, who are the target group for Reddit growth, is much higher in Iran than in Germany).
Second, this time Reddit users were not informed at all—not via r/announcements, not via some less frequented but still official subreddit.
Can Tildes be affected by NetzDG?
Most of the reasons that can be reported for are already disallowed here: hate speech, illegal activities, threats, etc. Also, things like insult and intimidation fall under “being an asshole.”
The biggest problem for Tildes is § 166 in its “non-confessional organisations” part. For example, Reddit is (most likely—I am not a German lawyer) a non-confessional organisation, and this very comment is critical of Reddit, so it can be perceived as an insult. Therefore, this comment violates NetzDG (most probably).
(§ 201a can be a substantial problem as well as the German definition of “the most personal sphere” is much broader than definitions of privacy in most countries.)Edit: a better formulation of the Tildes-related question is “Can Tildes be ever affected by NetzDG?” as NetzDG only applies to social networks with 2 million or more users in Germany, so even if some content here can be claimed to violate the German Criminal Code, Tildes do not have to provide means to report such content yet.
Edit: organisations mentioned in § 166 do not include social networks. However, § 185 - 187 (insult, defamation, slander) apply generally. The correct term in § 201a is “intimate privacy,” which is much narrower than privacy in general. Thanks @vektor below.
I'll correct a few misconceptions if you let me; not a lawyer, but german.
166 requires the writing or statement to be capable of disturbing public peace. You can still insult and criticize, just don't trigger violence with your words. There's still a vague line here (what's fighting words and what's just oversensitivity?) but it's waaaay further back. It also only applies to organisations of religion or worldview, the translation is plain terrible there. It also requires insults, which I think is a higher bar than you make it out to be, at least as long as you're not calling a policeman "dude".
201a is a defense against child porn, revenge porn and other non consentual imagery (or publication thereof) that depict sickness, death, sexuality, intimate family relationship details and the like. A higher bar than just 'private' it seems. Also, it's necessary for the image to either depict the person in a helpless state or be taken in a private space (apartment or other space protected from view). Exceptions for legitimate use cases may apply (science, art, news).
I'm interested in hearing why you think "most personal sphere" is so much broader than privacy.
I managed to find the official (but never announced in any public way—was it announced in Germany?) Reddit page here. Indeed, organisations mentioned in § 166 do not include social networks. However, § 185 - 187 are still there and could apply.
As for § 201a, I was indeed misled by the translation. The wording on the Reddit page is “intimate privacy.”
This is not an argument in good faith, which is silly as there are so many other, better reasons to be against this. Reddit's motivation comes from money as any company, and its revenue comes from advertisement. Advertisement money is based on the associated revenue gain by the company buying the ads, and the average German user has FAR more spending power than the average Iranian user, to the point Iran is eclipsed pretty much entirely and the very idea that you would get the same reaction to an Iranian law as you did a German one is ridiculous to the point of taking offence.
Please use a better argument.
I wonder about this. Sites outside Germany have no obligation to implement this law. Would Germany go and literally ban every site not implementing it?
Note the edit. It only applies to social networks with more than 2M german registered users. That's not that many sites. Facebook mostly, but probably also tumblr, reddit and twitter, but that's about it. All of these likely interested in their customers enough to follow the law.
Ah, that's way saner.
Excellent find on your first edit, that's a very useful caveat. The law is targeted at facebook and the likes anyways, so no reason to impose sanctions on small networks. At 2 million german users in a FOSS project, implementing the respective stuff wouldn't be that big a hurdle anymore. You're of course correct in that StGB is still enforcable on tildes (at least in germany - i.e. against german users) before that, just that tildes has no obligation to preemptively help enforcement.
Also, another caveat: 185-187 seem to only apply to natural persons or possibly groups thereof, so no organizations or companies. That's an interesting one. If memory serves, there was a case where a person displaying "ACAB" on their clothing was tried for insult, but that didn't go that far, because the statement ACAB was assumed to refer to an organization, thus no individual cop would have to consider themselves insulted; thus no insult.
On the other hand, there's a case in Austria where someone called a policeman "Oida" ("Alter", "old one", used pretty much like "Dude!") and was fined 100€ for it. The mind boggles. Austrians... ;)
Here's a list of all the reasons, you can report for, translated to English in this comment:
§ 86 - Dissemination of propaganda material by unconstitutional organisations
§ 86a - Use of symbols of unconstitutional organisations
§ 89a - Preparation of a serious act of violence endangering the state
§ 91 - Instructions for the perpetration of a serious act of violence endangering the state
§ 100a - Treacherous Counterfeiting
§ 111 - Public provocation to commit criminal offences
§ 126 - Disturbance of public peace through threats of criminal offences
§§ 129 - 129b - Formation of criminal organisations
§ 130 - Incitement to racial hatred
§ 131 - Depiction of violence
§ 140 - Reward and approval of criminal offences
§ 166 - Insults to denominations, religious communities and philosophical and non-confessional organisations
§ 184b in conjunction with § 184d - Distribution, acquisition and possession of child pornography writings
§ 185 - 187 - insult, slander, defamation
§ 201a - Violation of the most personal sphere of life through image recording
§ 241 - Intimidation
§ 269 - Falsification of data relevant to evidence
The redditor who translated these reasons notes: “Keep in mind, these all have a more in-depth definition in their respective paragraphs. I am also not a legal expert and have probably made mistakes during translation.”
Edit: typos
P.S. After some search, here is the official page on reddithelp.com which was added there no later than on October 30:
https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/network-enforcement-act-netzdg
there you can find “more official” (or just official?) translations as well as links to the German Criminal Code.
Many if not most of reddit's failures and choices that ultimately negatively impact its users are pretty familiar to me, but I wish I knew more about how this one worked/works out. In other words: what is the motivation for reddit to implement an option like this? Does the German government contact reddit and request that what we're looking at be put in place? In what capacity does reddit handle reports filed under that category? Or are they just forwarded to German officials?
I was aware that Germany has a rather stringent stance in affairs of speech (and copyright) but I can't imagine being the person willing to sign off on something like this - on reddit's side or within that country's government. Though the screenshot that the op includes the line:
To me, this isn't a "left versus right" issue. I feel this represents another small notch into what the Internet is - or otherwise used to be - for people. I take a very Picard-esque opinion (another) to the topic of freedom of speech. It's a value, not just a legal right - at least in my mind.
The law only applies to social networks with more than 2M german registered users, so the govt. could contact the affected sites individually. The alternative would be fines or being blocked from germany, I'd wager.
I think the law was specifically implemented to get a grip on hate speech on facebook - right wing hatespeech, mostly; that might explain the right-left divide.
It might just be me, but the laws around free speech seem rather common sense to me. It is my impression that what's criminalized is not your opinion or expression thereof; rather, the way you choose to express it. Beyond that, germany follows a philosophy similar to that of tildes: Low tolerance for things that could ruin the community/country for everyone. Germany reserves the right to proactively persecute enemies of the constitution, and human dignity, democracy and rule of law cannot legally be abolished. After WW2, the german constitution was designed to prevent that from happening again. Hence the prohibitions on nazi salutes and swastikas. (again, exceptions apply) A common counter argument is that nazis shouldn't be forced into hiding, so one can debate them and convince them or at least others, I fail to see how that is prevented by the respective laws. Their ideology is legal, their opinions are; the only difference is that their opinions don't give them a free pass to commit other crimes.(edit: the laws you're thinking of are likely more nuanced than you think, reporting on them is usually blown out of proportion internationally)
A criticism of this law I do however accept and in fact support is that it encourages the social networks to be the judge and DA in the question of what is legal or not. But I don't see an obvious solution. If the author is in germany, the law could give them a way to acknowledge the complaint, but basically say "yup, I said that, I stand by it, it's legal, sue me if you want; do not take my statement down", absolving the network of it's responsibility(kinda like a DMCA counter-claim, I think). But that wouldn't hold much weight if the author isn't reachable by german law enforcement.
Reddit has a lot of support categories that I didn't know about until recently, actually- I had no idea that there was a moderator complaint option on their website, so I went and took a look. The full list includes "investigations" (whatever that means), netzDG, and suicide/self-harm report (which is interesting in and of itself since they started simply telling mods to refer users to https://reddit.com/r/suicidewatch and reporting to the mod's local authorities) along with many others.
This isn't a new development, at least it hasn't happened in the past few months, it's just something they comply with to remain legal there, which still means it can do bad, but it means that more users have access. It's definitely something that should be pushed back against at the German government level, though.