12/29/2025 at 6:21:30 PM
by elcapitan
12/29/2025 at 7:14:45 PM
39c3 talk about this tomorrow (in German, but usually available with English translation) https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2025/fahrplan/event/...by elcapitan
12/29/2025 at 6:44:49 PM
So it is a collection of the best pirate sites?by sccxy
12/29/2025 at 11:34:24 PM
No, it isn't so. It misses even the most notorious yet still private sitesby SSLy
12/29/2025 at 7:02:33 PM
It is to me, faved.by pelagicAustral
12/29/2025 at 7:02:34 PM
Pretty much, yeah. Those they can't get to despite efforts.by jug
12/29/2025 at 7:11:03 PM
Let me write those down, to be sure no to go there by mistake.by EbNar
12/29/2025 at 10:04:10 PM
[flagged]by blell
12/29/2025 at 10:44:16 PM
I don’t know why you think this is an edgy comment, I’m actually screenshotting it to take a look tomorrow at the links. I’ve seen Anna archive and SCI hub which are extremely useful, if it helps finding more gems I’m all for it !by aucisson_masque
12/30/2025 at 1:12:37 AM
You're screenshotting URLs to type out?by echelon_musk
12/30/2025 at 2:50:46 AM
I do that on my phone. It's almost as easy to tap an ocr-ed url in my photos app as it is to click a link on a web page.(On my laptop, I'm just as likely to spend half a day writing a scraper or reverse engineering the javascript and apis to collect a dozen or two urls that I should have just jotted down in my notebook...)
by bigiain
12/30/2025 at 5:52:19 AM
This is probably the best innovation in the last decade as far as I’m concerned.It has conquered the 20 digit WiFi password in 6 font.
by lostlogin
12/30/2025 at 5:36:20 AM
why type, when you can copy and paste text from images these days??by NL807
12/29/2025 at 11:53:46 PM
It read that way to me too. It's the familiar switcheroo/hoist by their own petard/ironic one-upping move, a routine as well known to the internet as ape behavior is to Jane Goodall.by glenstein
12/29/2025 at 10:59:48 PM
Well it's the truth ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯by hermanzegerman
12/30/2025 at 10:12:15 AM
Collection goes into my blocklist for at home.Pirating is theft. Pirating is inhumane.
by accountofthaha
12/30/2025 at 4:29:40 PM
Sure buddy. Price-gouging consumers, regional lock-ins, paying creators a tiny %, revoking licenses, using public funds to make for-profit media, etc., these are all humane and chill.by port11
12/31/2025 at 10:11:54 AM
This is the result of the laws put in place, and yes they should be changed. That doesn't make pirating morally or legally justified. 'Because he is bad I can be bad too' is morally wrong.by accountofthaha
1/1/2026 at 6:56:10 PM
Or maybe it does. For some of usby asm0dey
12/29/2025 at 6:48:21 PM
For those wondering: it's DNS blocks, so only affecting those using ISP DNS.by Semaphor
12/29/2025 at 11:09:59 PM
Regardless of censorship, I don't recommend anyone to use ISP DNS servers. They are often slow, flaky and don't respect record TTLs.Quad 1/8/9 isn't optimal alternative (too much centralization if everyone uses those by default) but running your own is easy.
by progbits
12/30/2025 at 3:17:50 AM
some ISPs make it difficult to use other DNS serversby SoftTalker
12/30/2025 at 8:15:21 AM
There's DNS over HTTPS they can't viably block, so thankfully they get the short end of the stick here.edit: Thinking of it, anyone knows if it's possible to use that for OS-wide DNS resolves, not just for the browser?
by yrand
12/30/2025 at 9:03:45 AM
Yes, on both macOS and Windows 11. On Mac you have to create/use a simple .mobileconfig profile. On Windows you have to separately provide both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.by gmac
12/30/2025 at 2:00:50 PM
Or set up a forwarder such as unbound(8) in the LAN and set up the network to use it as the DNS server.by snvzz
12/29/2025 at 8:35:34 PM
Interesting. UK ISPs have had a similar block/filter list for many years (mostly covering copyright-infringing torrent websites and the like). But it’s more robust than a simple DNS block. A VPN can bypass the block, but changing DNS providers will not.by Reason077
12/29/2025 at 9:28:40 PM
What / how do they do it then? SNI inspection?by hsbauauvhabzb
12/29/2025 at 10:26:16 PM
The ISP's blackhole the IP for some blocked domains. So changing your DNS to 8.8.8.8 will resolve the domain, but the IP won't work. A VPN avoids this, since the traffic goes via the VPN IP.by lategloriousgnu
12/29/2025 at 11:02:43 PM
Wow that’s intense.I remember hearing someone complain on HN of their site getting blocked because it shared an IP with an illegal soccer livestream. I can’t imagine they’re doing this to IP blocks owned by CDNs like Fastly, CloudFlare, or CloudFront though. Or are they? Does this regularly break most of the internet for UK customers?
by nebezb
12/29/2025 at 11:20:17 PM
Spain ISPs block CloudFlare IPs during La Liga matches.by xuki
12/30/2025 at 1:41:17 AM
Do you have a source for this claim?by uncletammy
12/30/2025 at 2:23:24 AM
TBH it is not ALL cloudFlare IPs but a significant quantity of sites using and not using CF CDNs. You cannot imagine what a pest that is even for legit users of legit collateral damage pages. CloudFlare is in the courts appealing/countering initial court allowance to blockade and ISPs are bound to comply to blackout requests. You can look at https://hayahora.futbol (traslation: is there soccer match now?) to see affected domains.by jesuslop
12/30/2025 at 2:24:07 AM
https://protonvpn.com/blog/spain-laligaby lategloriousgnu
12/30/2025 at 2:04:30 PM
While I am not some reputable source per-se, I have some tailscale presence over there and can corroborate my exit nodes find cloudflare sites blanket blocked on weekends.by snvzz
12/29/2025 at 10:38:14 PM
How would that work with cloudflare and similar though?by hsbauauvhabzb
12/30/2025 at 2:19:41 AM
Cloudflare works with the UK government to facilitate blocks within their infra, I assume in exchange for being allowed to access UK network infrastructure.In the case that a blocked site resolved to a Cloudflare IP, it would likely be kicked off of Cloudflare, or geo-blocked for UK users (by Cloudflare).
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2025/07/cloudflare-blo...
by lategloriousgnu
12/30/2025 at 10:11:00 PM
Ironically that url is forbidden for me, I was under the impression that CF were fairly anti censorship, or at least they inferred that they should not be the one calling the shots (in reference to kiwifarms)by hsbauauvhabzb
12/30/2025 at 2:30:26 AM
I've never hit one. Flipping DNS works for (for example) Anna's Archive. Have you got an example?by flir
12/30/2025 at 12:20:18 AM
In that case it like someone controlling the DNS records for a banned site could cause some mischiefby ollybee
12/30/2025 at 2:07:00 AM
Transparent DNS proxies on ISP side. Easy thing for them.by Aldipower
12/30/2025 at 10:11:25 PM
DNS over HTTP is a thing also, though.by hsbauauvhabzb
12/29/2025 at 10:21:05 PM
If this is the case, someone running their own recursive DNS server (like Bind9 or Unbound) can trivially bypass these restrictions. Doing this is a sensible step towards more privacy, regardless of censorship.by drnick1
12/29/2025 at 10:25:27 PM
They don’t need to run their own DNS server, just configure a DNS server other than the ISP-provided one, like Quad9 or Google.by layer8
12/30/2025 at 8:49:48 AM
Using Google - one of the largest data mining companies out there - rather than my trusted ISP doesn’t sound d like a step towards privacyby hdgvhicv
12/30/2025 at 1:28:38 AM
Maybe this is a good place to ask: what is the easiest way to use my own DNS entirely in user mode (not a server when I can't change which DNS is pointed to, since not an admin), a SOCKSv5 proxy?It looks like this is possible with Chrome-based browsers using a command line flag (--host-resolver-rules) or in Firefox settings. Is there a better way?
by password4321
12/30/2025 at 4:20:21 AM
If you are on Linux, install unbound and set your DNS server to localhost, done.by pabs3
12/30/2025 at 3:06:03 AM
"private DNS". Configure your own (with ad blocking) on nextdns.by subscribed
12/29/2025 at 7:47:13 PM
Worth mentioning NextDNS and ControlD under this! I migrated from the former to the latter about six months ago, but both are a solid choice.by wrboyce
12/29/2025 at 9:18:35 PM
Free trial then $20USD per year for ControlD. Is that what you use? If so, why do you use this over another service?by mctt
12/29/2025 at 9:47:50 PM
Not OP but I also use ControlD. I admittedly like NextDNS interface better, but honestly, I rarely need to login anyways.So why ControlD? Because I don't want to run my own piHole, basically. They maintain ad block lists that you can edit as you see fit to add things or relax things that may cause issues(which you can't do easily with public ad blocking dns servers).
Why ControlD then and not NextDNS? First, because their support was awesome when I had an issue. AFAICT it was the founder actually emailing me back and forth, and it ended up being my ISP's fault, but I only knew that based on research provided to me by support. Secondly, I got a good deal on a 5-year subscription at one point.
Happy to answer any questions, not affiliated but a fan of the service.
by silisili
12/29/2025 at 9:41:33 PM
Not GP, but I just run my own dns inside the network (unbound on a little openbsd sbc) with a cronjob that pipes oisd.nl into it every night, works great..by cyberpunk
12/29/2025 at 8:07:23 PM
I am curious why SNI-based block isn't used.by maxloh
12/29/2025 at 8:09:25 PM
Shhh, don’t give them ideasby trinix912
12/29/2025 at 8:51:12 PM
It won't be relevant in a couple years when 90% of sites will be using ECH, meaning the SNI will be encrypted as well.by ronsor
12/29/2025 at 9:04:04 PM
Just enabling ECH doesn't stop this, firewalls can see it and mangle the data to force a downgrade because most servers need to support older protocols. It's more accurate to say that once sites only support ECH, then they'll be forced to stop downgrading or deal with angry users.by hypeatei
12/29/2025 at 9:33:53 PM
TLS 1.3, including the ECH extension, does not permit downgrading, unless your implementation is broken.Trying to downgrade or strip extensions from any TLS 1.3 connection will simply break the connection.
by ronsor
12/29/2025 at 9:50:12 PM
In the wild, that's not true at all[0][1]. The corporate firewall at my employer actually wasn't able to block ECH until they updated it then it was able to block sites as usual.0: https://community.fortinet.com/t5/FortiGate/Technical-Tip-Ho...
1: https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/symantec-ech-whitepaper (see page 8)
by hypeatei
12/29/2025 at 10:01:17 PM
This is literally impossible. What your corp fw likely does is mitm outer SNI because your IT department installed your company CA in every client's trust store. So unless you do that at national level your only other option is to block ECH entirely.Edit: actually totally possible but you need build quantum computer with sufficient cubits first =)
by dilyevsky
12/30/2025 at 2:58:35 AM
Last I heard, the QCbros were still trying to find the prime factors of 15.(I remember using quantum algorithms to find prime factors 25 years or more ago, using the Quantum::Suppositions Perl module.)
by bigiain
12/29/2025 at 10:11:29 PM
I ready the FortiGate link and this is the gist: The DNS filter setting on the FortiGate analyzes the DoH traffic and strips out the ECH parameters sent by the DNS server in the DoH response. If the client does not receive those parameters, it cannot encrypt the inner SNI, so it will send it in clear text.
by dilyevsky
12/30/2025 at 3:04:33 AM
I'm surprised that works. Doesn't TLS1.3 do the thing where it crosschecks (a hash of) the setup parameters after key-agreement to protect against exactly this kind of downgrade attack?(My phone screen is too small to look through the RFCs right now.)
by wiml
12/30/2025 at 4:19:51 AM
I think what you're describing is TLS1.3 Finished verification so that happens after DoH response during the actual handshake. Basically this works because ECH is fairly new and there's no HSTS-style "always use ECH for this site" configuration yet. And ofc this only works if you configured FortiGate as your DNS (corp network) or if it's doing MITM (though I'd expect browser would verify cert fingerprint for DoH connections as well).by dilyevsky
12/29/2025 at 10:00:54 PM
Is there even a push for ECH? I don’t imagine big tech and other powerful players particularly want it.by hsbauauvhabzb
12/30/2025 at 1:00:20 AM
Cloudflare and all the major browsers have supported it for a couple years now.by ls612
12/30/2025 at 5:40:26 AM
Computers have supported dnssec for years and it’s barely in use. Support != a push for.by hsbauauvhabzb
12/29/2025 at 10:35:50 PM
As a reward for freeing yourself from the de facto government DNS, you will now be gifted free movies for eternityby JohnLocke4
12/29/2025 at 8:35:42 PM
[flagged]by peter_d_sherman
12/29/2025 at 11:04:39 PM
And lithuanian list is here: https://www.nksc.lt/vasaris.html (in lithuanian). Mostly phishing sites, but includes fun piracy portals too.Content piracy specific, mostly movies, blocked by public broadcaster orders: https://www.nksc.lt/doc/vasaris/siena-lrtk.txt, https://www.nksc.lt/doc/vasaris/siena-lrtk-2.txt, https://www.nksc.lt/doc/vasaris/siena-lrtk-3.txt
by debesyla
12/29/2025 at 7:59:10 PM
What a handy list the Germans have preparedby kn100
12/29/2025 at 7:12:42 PM
But it is not legally required, and at least my smaller German ISP doesn’t seem to care.by leonwip
12/30/2025 at 12:25:59 AM
Of course, the CUII is not a government entity, it's just a group of copyright holders and ISPs, the member list is here:by __jonas
12/30/2025 at 3:14:39 AM
What incentivizes an ISP to become a member if it's not legally required and it pisses off (some) customers?by Timwi
12/30/2025 at 10:27:48 AM
not becoming a member might piss off the copyright holders and incentivize them to send you unwelcome legal communicationsby tensegrist
12/29/2025 at 8:01:32 PM
I use an o2 DSL connection in Berlin. The domains I tested seem to resolve fine. And you can of course configure an alternate DNS. Which apparently I didn't yet on my new laptop. So, that is fixed now. Mostly that's just a performance fix. Operator DNS tends to be a bit slow to respond and it's nice to get back a few milliseconds. But I also don't mind my operator not spying on me.Of course I also use Firefox so mostly that just bypasses the system DNS entirely and uses dns over https.
by jillesvangurp
12/29/2025 at 7:46:43 PM
Which one is that?I would be interested in paying a bit more if the ISP is better. In the Netherlands we always had xs4all, nowadays sorta morphed into freedom internet, which was started from a hacker magazine and kept the spirit, fighting surveillance and censorship while offering regular ISP services and then some. I'm not aware that Germany has such a thing so any step in the right direction would make me switch if I can get it (should be fine if it's available via Telekom's public network, we're currently on a virtual operator as well)
by lucb1e
12/30/2025 at 12:31:41 AM
My small”ish” German ISP advertises Google DNS in its DHCP responseby fignews
12/29/2025 at 10:20:28 PM
My ISP doesn't care either. Why would they.by borlox
12/29/2025 at 6:55:36 PM
and here for Magenta Austria https://blog.magenta.at/internet/sicherheit/netzsperre/by croisillon
12/29/2025 at 8:10:15 PM
This reminds me of a screenshot I saw where someone told chatgpt they stumbled upon a piracy website and wanted a list of other websites to avoid hahahaby zoklet-enjoyer
12/29/2025 at 6:42:34 PM
So there are only 295 domains censored? Seems like a lot of them of streaming sights breaking copyright/license agreements. Has to be a small fraction of those such sites alone.by nonethewiser
12/29/2025 at 7:29:48 PM
I know a few more, for example demonoid. This list is just a sunset. Inb4 "actually it's not Germany censoring. It's the ISPs"by on_the_train
12/29/2025 at 7:51:25 PM
I thought demonoid was dead dead?by deejaaymac
12/29/2025 at 9:31:50 PM
Ah yes, we need to forcefully protect our citiziens from all the evils of the internet: rapists, pedophiles, terrorists ... oh wait, this is just about copyright stuff.Seriously, thanks for updating that list and the nice instructions to circumvent. (3 clicks with firefox, without the need to install anything or type in anything by hand)
by lukan
12/30/2025 at 1:37:35 PM
I wonder what the overlap is of people who find out about one of these URLs, but also does not know how to use a VPN? It seems to me like it would be near zero.I also wonder if there is some kind of legal requirement for ISPs to engage in that kind of immoral, inhumane, and authoritarian censorship?
I get the “stealing is bad” argument, but far worse and an evil slippery slopes is depriving humans of their human right to free will.
by hopelite
12/30/2025 at 1:54:53 PM
> I wonder what the overlap is of people who find out about one of these URLs, but also does not know how to use a VPN? It seems to me like it would be near zero.The whole kinox thing was "common knowledge" among students a few years ago. And this was way before VPN providers became patrons of the arts.
by Garlef
12/30/2025 at 9:24:46 AM
I see canna.to on the list. Amazing, that site already existed when I downloaded MP3s in my early internet days, in 2000. And still looks pretty much the same.by imartin2k
12/30/2025 at 9:49:24 PM
Same though, must be a passion project of some retirees by now.by seb1204
12/30/2025 at 3:11:06 AM
Error 522 Server Times Out when SSL certificate is not valid. Consider Cloudflare’s 527 Railgun Origin error for WAN connections.https://web.archive.org/web/20161013152120/https://support.c...
by hamonrye
12/29/2025 at 8:01:12 PM
I have never visited these kino domains, but I assume that’s just some piracy entity. Yet it’s quite impressive how many various domain names they bought! What for? Is it to avoid those blocks? Or is there any more reasons?by wltr
12/29/2025 at 8:24:37 PM
mostly to avoid the blocking. Those streaming sites used to be extremely popular here in Germany because there was an entire cottage industry (Abmahnanwälte) that used to pester uploaders with legal threats.Not sure what the state of it is now given that commercial streaming replaced a lot of both.
by Barrin92
12/29/2025 at 6:58:23 PM
Honestly makes it look like legislation with "sponsorship" from the film industry. I had expected much shadier stuff or those overrun with malware to protect users, not like 90% illicit streaming.by jug
12/29/2025 at 7:09:27 PM
> or those overrun with malware to protect usersThe anti-malware companies won't lobby government to block malware as that would cut into sales of their anti virus/malware.
by baby_souffle
12/29/2025 at 7:29:23 PM
There is no legislation here. CUII is a private organization that generates lists of domains that contain copyright violations. ISPs voluntarily choose to block those.by carpenecopinum
12/29/2025 at 8:18:24 PM
Voluntarily under threat of prosecution under existing legislation if they don't.by like_any_other
12/29/2025 at 11:02:41 PM
no, under threat of filing every single copyright claim against them, swamping their legal department.Which is the correct way to do it (i.e. file a claim if you see someone violating copyright law). This just makes it easier for the ISPs
by dark-star
12/30/2025 at 2:05:28 AM
> no, under threat of filing every single copyright claim against themA.k.a. prosecution under existing legislation.
by like_any_other
12/30/2025 at 12:02:41 AM
I love Streisand effect.by ivanjermakov
12/30/2025 at 4:35:27 PM
"Censoring" in this way is stupid and ineffective. Germans should demand better.by lunias
12/30/2025 at 12:56:37 PM
I found nice soccer streams thanks to that list I never would have been able to find otherwise.by morgengold
12/29/2025 at 10:53:53 PM
Being German, is not surprising so many are sites with football games (i.e. the game Americans call "soccer").by diego_moita
12/30/2025 at 2:26:47 AM
We once laughed at China for building a wall — and now we’ve built our ownby maoxiaoke
12/30/2025 at 2:33:35 AM
We're doing a lot of things China is doing.Meta, Flock cameras, Palantir. It's just a public-private partnership rather than purely state-owned enterprise, like the NSA/CIA/DoD.
In theory we have more distribution of power, but it's still surveillance and control that we have little say in.
by echelon
12/30/2025 at 2:55:34 AM
The issue is that China has done, on the whole, fairly alright for itself. So everyone with any power in the West is looking and thinking: "huh, so the freedom and rights and property were really not important for progress at all - might as well can it".by summa_tech
12/29/2025 at 8:32:45 PM
related:December 2024, 31 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42457712
by croisillon
12/30/2025 at 12:29:11 AM
Nice, a list of torrent sites!by kuon
12/29/2025 at 7:14:43 PM
Anna's Archive and Sci-Hub. So despite their facade the German government is just as draconian as the US.by nik282000
12/29/2025 at 7:32:44 PM
The main complaint about these blocks is that they are managed and decided on by private companies and _not_ by the government / law.by dewey
12/29/2025 at 11:10:23 PM
they are still optional for the ISPs though. But if they don't implement them, they will have dozens of lawsuits to handle, that is why many ISPs say "fuck it" and just implement the blocks, to save money on their legal teamby dark-star
12/29/2025 at 7:21:27 PM
The government or even courts are not involved with these blocks.by fuzzy2
12/29/2025 at 7:17:18 PM
Despite what facade?by crazygringo
12/29/2025 at 7:28:55 PM
The frequently repeated keystone lie that Europeans have equivalent or greater rights, freedoms, and protection from authoritarianism than Americans, which is and has always been objectively and completely false.by easterncalculus
12/29/2025 at 8:54:13 PM
Citation? Every democracy index I've ever heard of rates most of Europe as more democratic than the US. (Eastern Europe will typically be rated lower, all of the former USSR states seem to be struggling with various degrees of corruption or similar problems)The most commonly used index for example:
by amarant
12/30/2025 at 2:06:40 PM
Even assuming that index is of any worth, Democracy is not the same thing as rights, freedoms, or protection from authoritarianismby snvzz
12/29/2025 at 8:18:28 PM
Well according to press freedom indices many European countries and the US are quite similarly ranked. Some countries better some countries worse.Some countries have stronger institutions against dictatorships than others but unfortunately we have seen that even the US isn't immune and that slides auch as in Poland and Hungary are possible.
There is always hope that things can turn around (as in Poland even though the road is hard and there are setbacks)
by oezi
12/30/2025 at 1:29:14 AM
As an european living and feeding of mostly US sources online, I completely agree. In the US people do really have freedom of speech. This doesn't exist in the EU. Just try to say 1/10th of what you can say in the US and you'll be thrown behind bars in the EU.The biggest one being that most newspapers in the EU are state-controlled, Pravda-style, propagandist outlet pushing pro-EU narratives. Once you live across several EU countries and speak several languages, you can see how all the topics are synched and pushing the exact same narrative.
Basically: the EU is very good at producing people repeating that the EU is great.
To me the biggest problem is that the EU Commission is way too busy turning the EU into a totalitarian nightmare instead of trying to compete economically with the US and China. As a result in 17 years China's GDP went from $4 trillion to $20 trillion, surpassing the GDP of the eurozone (which only grew 25%: 25% vs 400%).
That's an abysmal failure and the EU is sinking and it shows anywhere you go to in the EU: cities are becoming shitholes at an alarming speed. And everything is done to try to damage control and prevent people from talking about what is ongoing.
The EU is heading straight into a wall (actually it already hit it).
I want out.
by TacticalCoder
12/30/2025 at 2:08:10 PM
>I want out.Asia is not so bad. Try Japan.
I do not miss Europe, so you could say it worked out for me.
by snvzz
12/29/2025 at 7:56:21 PM
Well, when fascists are in power, paper won't help anyone. But at this point, as a European I enjoy enumerated human and civil rights from multiple constitutions and several international treaties, which are directly enforceable by courts at the state, national, and European level.The human and civil rights guaranteed by the US constitution are a complete joke in comparison, and most of them are not guaranteed directly constitution, but by Supreme Court interpretation of vague 18th century law that can change at any time.
by cedilla
12/29/2025 at 9:29:13 PM
You seem to have missed the Bill of Rights. Which is odd, because whenever we tell you during online arguments that our rights are guaranteed, you all say that absolute rights are dumb and it's actually more sophisticated and European to not have them.Not that courts, legislators, and administrations haven't tried and succeeded in abridging them somewhat in any number of different ways for shorter or longer periods, but the text remains, and can always be referred to in the end. They have to abuse the language in order to abridge the Bill of Rights, and eventually that passes the point of absurdity.
No such challenge in Europe. Every "right" is the right to do something unless it is not allowed.
by pessimizer
12/29/2025 at 8:12:44 PM
Is it draconian that piracy sites aren't resolved by some ISPs' DNS?Is it draconian if no Government entity is involved? And the penalty is unavailability?
I thought draconian implies that the punishment is much too high in relationship to the crime.
Maybe the whole affair is more dystopian rather than draconian: ISPs block access to media even though no law or government asked them to just so they have less hassle with rightholders.
by oezi
12/29/2025 at 7:46:17 PM
> German government is just as draconian as the USthis is called "disinformation"
by almostgotcaught
12/29/2025 at 9:32:19 PM
Will Germany be banning HN for not deleting it and sentencing nik282000 to a prison term then?by pessimizer
12/29/2025 at 8:34:05 PM
They are considering banning the largest opposition party, are using wiretaps and informants against it [1], have banned (ban since lifted) a magazine [2], and opened a criminal investigation into someone calling a fat politician fat online [3]. They are openly planning even worse [4] (if you dislike the author, keep in mind every claim is sourced, so take it up with the sources).[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/13/court-confirms-germ...
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-compact-press-freedom-right-wi...
[3] https://www.foxnews.com/media/germany-started-criminal-inves...
[4] Germany announces wide-ranging plans to restrict the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents, in order to better control the "thought and speech patterns" of its own people - https://www.eugyppius.com/p/germany-announces-wide-ranging-p...
Edit as reply to nosianu, because I am "posting too fast":
> Liar. Some demand it - but it is not considered by those with the power to actually do it, not even close.
On Monday, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is currently serving as the junior coalition partner in Berlin’s conservative-led government, voted unanimously to begin efforts to outlaw [AfD]. - https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/06/europe/germany-afd-ban-po...
The Jewish German intelligence chief trying to ban the AfD - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/12/09/jewish-ger...
I would not call the head of German intelligence and ruling coalition parties "not even close". Kindly save that liar label for yourself.
> The AfD happily participates in state and federal elections and is in the federal parliament (Bundestag).
"Considering" means they haven't done it yet. Some tried, but have not yet succeeded.
by like_any_other
12/29/2025 at 9:02:04 PM
Largest opposition party?It's a neo nazi terrorist group with a political wing!
There are 9 main parties in Germany, AfD doesn't even make top 10…
Your comment is like saying the US is shooting political dissidents, and then referring to Al-Qaida or ISIS.
by amarant
12/29/2025 at 9:13:42 PM
> It's a neo nazi terrorist group with a political wing!If you have a source showing AfD organized terrorist attacks, please present it. I could find no such thing.
> There are 9 main parties in Germany, AfD doesn't even make top 10…
In the 2025 elections, the largest party, the CDU, got 28.5% of the vote. The AfD came second with 20.8%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2025_German_fed...
So you're simply lying.
by like_any_other
12/30/2025 at 9:11:09 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Walter_L%C3%BCbckeby the_why_of_y
12/30/2025 at 5:11:36 PM
> He also had connections to the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) parties.Following the source wikipedia gives [1], we see the extent of that "connection" was that the killer donated €150 to the AfD, and that the AfD had previously criticized the victim (by sharing the victim's exact own words online).
Let's apply your standard evenly then, shall we? A writer for the state-funded left-wing Amadeu Antonio Foundation, armed with hammers and pepper spray, attacked a right-wing activist [2]. This attack was one of many [3]. So by your standard the German state sponsors and endorses terrorists. The US Democrat party wants to create an ICE tracker [4]. ICE agents have been the targets of attacks and ambushes [5,6,6a]. And of course it was hateful rhetoric [7] against Trump and Kirk that led to their (attempted) assassinations by the left. By your standard, the Democrat party engages in stochastic terrorism.
Of course that's just guilt by (vague) association. Enough for you, but I have higher standards. Bill Clinton pardoned a terrorist who (among other things) bombed the Senate. She now sits on the board of BLM [8,9]. An axe-wielding maniac attacked a Republican senator's home. Democrat politicians then donated money to the attacker [10]. The founder of the terrorist group Weather Underground [11], Bill Ayers, is now a distinguished professor at the state-funded University of Illinois [12], so we can add them to terrorists as well. As well as the University of California, where the terrorist Angela Davis is also a distinguished professor. "Terrorist" can be a vague term, so let me be specific: she bought the shotgun seen here taped to the neck of Judge Harold Haley, and helped plan the attack that killed him [13].
"In an op-ed piece after the election, Ayers denied any close association with Obama, and criticized the Republican campaign for its use of guilt by association tactics." - perhaps you should reflect on this.
So now what? Will you reconsider calling AfD terrorists? Will you instead also call the US Democratic and the German CDU parties terrorists? Maybe even apply more skepticism to the news sources that have so deceived you by cherry-picking what they show you?
Or will you reconsider nothing, and just hope the next person you lie to is less informed? Rhetorical question.
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/father-neighbor...
[2] https://www.bild.de/regional/berlin/linksextremisten-greifen...
[3] In 2023, the AfD saw 86 violent attacks on AfD party representatives. This was more than on any other German party. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany
[4] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/5566481-ice-tra...
[5] https://www.ngocomment.com/p/the-first-federal-terror-case-a...
[6] https://www.fox4news.com/news/texas-ice-detention-center-att...
[6a] https://www.foxnews.com/us/who-joshua-jahn-shooter-deadly-da...
[7] That some of this rhetoric was true makes no difference - the charge of "stochastic terrorism" had no exceptions for truth when used against the right. And indeed the AfD's statements about the victim in the case you linked are not even alleged to be untrue.
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Rosenberg
[9] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/blm-terrorist-rosenberg/ ("mixture" because yes it's all true, but it's "subjective" if bombing government buildings is really terrorism)
[10] https://www.kfyrtv.com/2021/01/09/democrats-donate-to-suspec...
[11] At one point, the Weathermen adopted the belief that all white babies were "tainted with the original sin of "skin privilege", declaring "all white babies are pigs" with one Weatherwoman telling feminist poet Robin Morgan "You have no right to that pig male baby" after she saw Morgan breastfeeding her son and told Morgan to put the baby in the garbage. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers
[13] https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/31eyvt/judge_h...
by like_any_other
12/30/2025 at 6:56:42 PM
[flagged]by JearBew
12/30/2025 at 12:44:56 AM
These statements are meaningless without considering who is being targeted by these rules. For context, Germany has a long-standing constitutional ban on Nazis. This isn't anything new; what is new is that one party (the AfD) is trying to find ways around the ban.If you're arguing that the AfD aren't Nazis, I'm not sure I agree. They're already privately talking about deporting German citizens.
If you are arguing that banning a political party[0] is inherently wrong... sure. I'll agree with you, with one caveat. How do you meaningfully stop people from doing that? Just saying "Well, that would be illegal, so just disobey the illegal order" is not good enough. That's what you do for otherwise normal politicians that fuck up drafting the law[1]. But the people who are doing this shit are malicious. They need to be removed from power or they will just keep trying until they get their way. And that effectively means banning the political party trying to ban everyone else. Only a stand user can beat another stand user. Hence, the constitutional ban on Nazis.
[0] I should not have to explain to people that the Nazis banned other political parties.
[1] see also, the US 1st Amendment, which prohibits laws that restrict speech without specifying any meaningful punishment for politicians that attempt to restrict speech.
by kmeisthax
12/30/2025 at 7:45:29 AM
>They're already privately talking about deporting German citizens.That's not specifically a Nazi policy. In fact, remigration is an increasingly popular political idea in various Western countries that don't have any specific Nazi past (US, the UK, Australia, etc.)
(Remigration is also frequently done by non-Western countries as well.)
by remig31
12/30/2025 at 12:56:59 AM
> They're already privately talking about deporting German citizens.So is immigration policy supposed to be irreversible? One side can grant citizenship willy nilly, but undoing their actions is Nazism and illegal? Would not granting those citizenships in the first place also have been Nazism? The bar for branding someone a Nazi is low, and ~80% or more of the allied forces that fought in WWII would be Nazis under today's definition:
https://ia902302.us.archive.org/25/items/us-war-department-f...
https://archive.org/download/the-unknown-warriors/The%20Unkn...
by like_any_other
12/30/2025 at 4:33:30 PM
Citizenship has to be irreversible, or very close to it, for one simple reason: revoking citizenship is equivalent to stripping someone of their constitutionally-protected rights. Even if you have a well-defined and protected concept of free speech in the law, if the administration or government can just identify and deport people saying things they don't like, then their free speech is meaningless. Punishment and reprisal is an adequate substitute for silencing. You don't have freedoms anymore, you have franchise, a thing that can be taken away at the whim of the state[0].Reversing a change to visa policy or not granting citizenship to migrants in the future is a different question. But it's far less problematic to not grant citizenship or visas than it is to revoke them after the fact.
As for "granting citizenship willy nilly", that wasn't done by "one side". The law is such that the choice of whether or not to admit an asylum seeker is a purely legalistic one with no political control afforded. The only thing Merkel (for better and for worse) did was smile and wave at the migrants you don't like. She had no power to stop them either. The reason why the law works this way is, again, because of WWII and Nazis. People fleeing Hitler were stopped by immigration policies at every turn. So we got every country to sign a bunch of international agreements that basically say "we will not attempt to stop people fleeing despotic regimes from entering our country".
Now, I get the feeling you want to shit on this policy, and I actually do think there's a valid critique of it. Specifically, only admitting immigrants during a time of crisis is almost guaranteed to generate resentment, both from the native-born and immigrant populations. You see, while Germany pledged to hand out passports like candy to asylum seekers, the rest of German immigration policy is rigidly inflexible and their society even more so[1].
The AfD getting banned under Germany's anti-Nazi policy is not at all unprecedented. Actually, they've had to use that same policy against the immigrants they're admitting. There's biker gangs run by Turkish immigrants that are illegal in Germany because they're too far-right. The case of Turkish immigrants to Germany is particularly illuminating. Turks in Germany have a higher rate of support for Erdogan than they do in Turkiye. Germany has managed to create a society that reliably turns poor immigrants into far-right stooges.
Do you want to know what country turns Turkish immigrants away from Islamist dictators? America.
Trump regime notwithstanding[2], the USA immigration system is unusually flexible and permissive for a rich country, and it has very generous family reunification visa programs. The family visas are, effectively, outsourcing the decision of what immigrants to admit to citizens that know the people they're sponsoring. It's an invite system. And since we've been doing this consistently for 50 years, we have immigrant communities from basically every country on the planet. So there's a very smooth gradient to integration. The "marginal cost" of an additional immigrant is basically zero. We imported the third world, but the third world became us.
> The bar for branding someone a Nazi is low, and ~80% or more of the allied forces that fought in WWII would be Nazis under today's definition:
This isn't related to the merits of the German constitutional ban on Nazis at all, but since I just spent a paragraph glazing modern American immigration policy, I feel obligated to completely dynamite America's moral foundations. I mean, even the family visas weren't intended to do what they're doing. Actually, they were created specifically to give white immigrants a fast lane through the system! The prior policy was basically "white immigrants only" and this was meant to appease people who opposed deracializing the immigration system.
To be frank, America's the country Hitler got all his worst ideas from. WWII happened right after the nadir of American race relations. The """liberal""" business establishment was planning assassinations and coups against the President. Hell, we were not that far off from joining the Axis. FDR had to bait Japan into attacking us to get the American people on board with fighting WWII. And even then he couldn't resist throwing shittons of Japanese immigrants into concentration camps in a blatant land grab.
There's a funny (in the "two nickels" sense) quirk of American history in that America will absolutely tolerate and engage in morally detestable bullshit until a war or other crisis makes it undeniably wrong. Lincoln ran on an abolitionist platform, but the actual moral opinion didn't change against slavery until Union soldiers were marching on plantations and actually seeing the horrors of slavery with their own eyes. Likewise, while we were nominally fighting an evil tyrant, that didn't hit home for a lot of soldiers until they were literally marching on Auschwitz and smelling dead bodies.
[0] The root word of "franchise" is "French", as in, the process of making one into a Frenchman. The linguistic association between France and temporary / revocable permission is because that's how freedom worked there at one point. Probably under a king named Louis.
[1] This is the same country where an announced rail detour becomes a passenger kidnapping because the driver couldn't be arsed to clear the extra stops up the chain.
[2] Part of the reason why the Trump regime is so polarizing in America is because European-style immigration enforcement is so alien to us.
by kmeisthax
12/31/2025 at 6:47:31 PM
>Citizenship has to be irreversible, or very close to it,Australia at least states that expulsion is compatible with human rights.
"The Bill is compatible with human rights because, to the extent that it may limit some human rights, those limitations are reasonable, necessary and proportionate in achieving the legitimate objective of protecting the Australian community."
Attachment A Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights
by interloxia
1/1/2026 at 10:40:40 PM
We're talking about the same Australia that decided to just blanket-ban kids off social media? Because they're basically a puppet of the Murdoch news empire?Why should I trust anything they say about human rights?
by kmeisthax
12/30/2025 at 5:15:44 PM
> The law is such that the choice of whether or not to admit an asylum seeker is a purely legalistic one with no political control afforded.Right, and laws are not the result of politics, but are handed to us by God on stone tablets.
Your framing is also misleading - admitting refugees [0], and granting them citizenship, are very different. Relaxing citizenship requirements to a mere 5 years of residing in Germany (or just 3 with German language proficiency) is also very much political, as was the admission of 3 million explicitly economic migrant Turks.
We're asked to believe immigration and immigration policy is something that just happens, like the tides, in response to economic and geopolitical events, and politics can do nothing about it. Meanwhile Iran has deported 1.3 million Afghans, and plans to deport 2 million more [2]. So they are "afforded political control". As is China, which, despite being a growing economy and with significantly below-replacement fertility, has a population of just 0.1% immigrants [3].
[0] I wouldn't even call them that, since they passed through many safe countries before even reaching the EU, let alone Germany.
[1] https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/politik-inland/einbuerger...
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/iran-plans-to-deport-2-million-afghan-...
by like_any_other
12/29/2025 at 9:09:30 PM
> They are considering banning the largest opposition partyLiar. Some demand it - but it is not considered by those with the power to actually do it, not even close. The AfD happily participates in state and federal elections and is in the federal parliament (Bundestag).
Why are you against freedom of speech??
People saying what they want is allowed! No action of that kind was or is taken. AfD and its members continues to participate in normal political life and getting elected, and they continue to participate in TV and media interviews.
What exactly is your complaint? You complain about some people's speech - while claiming to be for freedom of speech! Very peculiar.
by nosianu
12/29/2025 at 10:10:21 PM
[dead]by 08766747563434
12/29/2025 at 8:09:07 PM
I honestly cannot tell if this is serious, or irony, or even meta-irony.by trelane
12/29/2025 at 8:32:53 PM
If I understand it right, then OP likely believes that Germany has a draconian regime when it comes to freedom of speech (which is objectively just ridiculous give or take some German nuances).OP thus wants to make fun of those (such as me) who are puzzled by a statement that Germany could be considered a draconian state with regards to freedom of speech. It is hard to engage OP because he likely isn't German and has no personal knowledge and experience at all if any of his speech would be censored in Germany. Calling OP disinformed maybe isn't quite correct, maybe misinformed would fit better.
by oezi
12/29/2025 at 11:57:36 PM
Interesting they went through the trouble of blocking specific subdomains rather than just blanketing the entire domains for all the "www*." at the end of the listAnd yet, the entire beginning of the list, no subdomains listed - so are subdomains for them allowed (unless specifically blocked here)?
by lacoolj
12/30/2025 at 12:26:34 AM
buffstreams.sx wasn’t what I hoped for.by andsoitis
12/29/2025 at 7:28:57 PM
And now I am really interested in what Anna might have in that archive of her'sby jstummbillig
12/29/2025 at 7:48:10 PM
For example soon to be released 300TB Spotify music library dump.by gloxkiqcza
12/31/2025 at 1:04:06 PM
Lol, list doesnt load any longerby gilrim
12/30/2025 at 7:28:38 AM
uh, great so many about movie streaming https://kinos.tothen you blame governments
by oriettaxx
12/29/2025 at 9:05:11 PM
[dead]by tyiz
12/29/2025 at 6:48:23 PM
Germans are mostly chill but if you start torrenting copyrighed content or even watching illegal streaming they will eat your face and drink your warm blood.by lifestyleguru
12/29/2025 at 7:48:26 PM
German Wikipedia was taken down twice (for "privacy", not piracy though). Still "illegal information". In the latter case about a former Stasi worker turned leftist member of parliament.https://www.theregister.com/2006/01/20/wikipedia_shutdown/
The German Wikipedia site was taken down by court order this week because it mentioned the full name of a deceased Chaos Computer Club hacker, known as Tron. A Berlin court ordered the closure of the site on Tuesday after it sided with the parents of the German hacker, who wanted to prevent the online encyclopedia from publishing the real name of their son. A final ruling is expected in two weeks' time.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090129160045/https://cyberlaw....
By virtue of an interim injunction ordered by the Lübeck state court dated November 13, 2008, upon the request of Lutz Heilmann (Member of Parliament – “Die Linke” party), Wikipedia Germany is hereby enjoined from continuing linking from the Internet address wikipedia.de to the Internet address de.wikipedia.org, as long as under the address de.wikipedia.org certain propositions concerning Lutz Heilmann remain visible.
by lysace
12/29/2025 at 7:54:17 PM
Sometimes it feels that the only reason for German "privacy laws" are former Nazi and Stasi officials hiding their past.by lifestyleguru
12/29/2025 at 8:44:24 PM
Those all live in South America thoughby amarant
12/29/2025 at 11:40:34 PM
Some hardcore nazis went to South America.You may know about Rote Armee Fraktion/Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe. They were a self-proclaimed communist and anti-imperialist urban guerrilla group. They murdered 34 people. A number of these were former Nazi party members that in the 1970s had climbed to powerful positions in West Germany. OTOH, during the war nazi party membership was not exactly optional if you ran a business.
On the other side of the border: While Angela Merkel denies it, I find it extremely improbable that she did not work for Stasi in some form.
by lysace
12/29/2025 at 7:11:53 PM
I knew about torrenting, due to the problem of redistributing copyright material. But pure streaming? Are you sure that is illegal in Germany?by tirant
12/29/2025 at 7:16:27 PM
No, it’s not. Friend of mine was doing it on regular basis and only stopped because he got Amazon Prime subscription and didn’t need to anymore.by p2detar
12/29/2025 at 10:38:37 PM
Wait people are illegal streaming twitch?I guess that makes sense but I never thought about that.
by tyre
12/29/2025 at 10:49:18 PM
Prime includes Amazon Video or whateverby lionkor
12/29/2025 at 7:43:04 PM
There were attempts at legal bullying, but mostly with aim to humiliate the victim as the correspondence contains the full titles of porn videos.by lifestyleguru
12/29/2025 at 11:09:16 PM
the problem is people don't know about torrents, and many streaming sites are based on torrents, so they re-upload the stream while you're watching, which gets you into troubleby dark-star
12/29/2025 at 11:32:47 PM
how does that work?by throwreallyw
12/30/2025 at 9:53:33 AM
For example this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_TimeThis was the first one I think, right now there are e.g. Kodi Plug-ins and other media servers that work the same way
by dark-star
12/29/2025 at 6:56:36 PM
German authorities, not Germans.by xg15
12/29/2025 at 7:11:22 PM
It's mostly certain law firms employed by copyright owners.Famous (in Germany) example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal (use auto-translate, it's German)
by nosianu
12/29/2025 at 10:48:51 PM
> Famous (in Germany) example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frommer_Legal (use auto-translate, it's German)For a lot of Germans who are knowledgable in this topic, being associated with such a company is nearly like openly admitting to have raped children. The hate for these law firms and their employees is extreme.
by aleph_minus_one
12/29/2025 at 7:28:23 PM
Germans yes, the gov with their over-regulation notby mikigraf
12/29/2025 at 7:10:54 PM
Except for the late night home raids rooting out "hate speech". Opposite of chill.by UberFly
12/29/2025 at 7:14:03 PM
Just for anyone new here, if you have comments like this, please be specific and post something a neutral person can verify and form their own opinion on. Don't just post silly one-liners that don't have any real content.This would have been a concrete example, where a government minister abused the system because a tweet annoyed him: https://theweek.com/news/world-news/954635/willygate-german-...
by nosianu
12/29/2025 at 7:24:58 PM
I'll also take the bait. As far as I understand it, these rules come, fundamentally, from the German Basic Law which was drafted, in part, with direct support from the US after the war. There's certainly always room for healthy debate about what is meant by freedom of speech. But it strikes me as ignorant to come from a US "absolutist" perspective and not understand the history (of US involvement). No clue if the poster is approaching it from that perspective; I'm trying to raise the point of historical context in response to the category of such responses I've encountered.by spit2wind
12/29/2025 at 7:15:20 PM
I'll take the bait because I'm annoyed by the boiling-frog aspect to vaguely alluding to things.Here's the press release on this:
https://www.bka.de/DE/Presse/Listenseite_Pressemitteilungen/...
tl;dr Since in Germany it is illegal to e.g. make public postings calling for the rape of women or share video footage of women being murdered and tortured for the purpose of entertainment and gloating, one day ahead of International Womens Day police staged a big showy series of raids on individuals doing such things, to make a point and call attention to the issue.
Sounds like an excellent use of my tax money, to be honest, but it was certainly controversial also in Germany.
by sho_hn
12/29/2025 at 7:28:52 PM
It is also illegal to share crime statistics or make jokes about politiciansby on_the_train
12/29/2025 at 7:33:25 PM
Observe how hyperbole comes without links, in comparison.by sho_hn
12/29/2025 at 7:36:56 PM
https://www.bz-berlin.de/meinung/kolumne/kolumne-mein-aerger...by on_the_train
12/30/2025 at 8:46:55 AM
This article doesn't report the facts correctly; the search warrant was issued for posting an anti-semitic Nazi meme.(Just for the record, I believe that a well-known politician should just have to live with being insulted.)
> The Bavaria resident is also accused of posting Nazi-era imagery and language earlier in 2024. According to prosecutors, this post may have violated German laws against the incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.
> The man was arrested on Thursday as part of nationwide police operations against suspected antisemitic hate speech online.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-...
This article is more informative:
Translated (with DeepL.com):
> The public prosecutor's office in Bamberg has now announced: The search had already been requested before the Green politician himself filed a criminal complaint in the case.
> Habeck only filed a criminal complaint in the case more than a month after the search warrant had been requested.
> According to the public prosecutor's office, the suspect is also facing another charge: According to this, in spring 2024, he allegedly uploaded a picture on X with a reference to the Nazi dictatorship, which could potentially constitute the criminal offense of incitement to hatred. According to the investigators, it shows an SS or SA man with the poster and the words “Germans don't buy from Jews” and the additional text “True democrats! We've had it all before!”.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/schwachkopf-belei...
(Note the date on the last article - 5 days later than the one you linked - likely the facts weren't known to the public before then)
by the_why_of_y
12/29/2025 at 7:34:04 PM
Hrmmm, German supports using the monopoly on violence given to the state to make raids on people who make undesirable social media posts.There’s only one problem. Whos to say you won’t be the next target if the political climate shifts to cracking down on pro-censorship voices like yourself?
Will you think its still a good use of your tax money when the opposition is putting you in a police car for this exact HN comment?
by pembrook
12/29/2025 at 10:43:34 PM
> Hrmmm, German supports using the monopoly on violence given to the state to make raids on people who make undesirable social media posts.The German society is insanely divided on a lot of (in this case: political) topics. Better avoid making such generalizations.
by aleph_minus_one
12/30/2025 at 9:38:44 AM
In my reading he meant the author of the parent comment specifically, hence "German supports" and not "Germans support". So not a generalization.by alexey-salmin
12/29/2025 at 7:43:54 PM
> German supports using the monopoly on violence given to the state to make raids on people who make undesirable social media posts.Yes. As a sibling poster mentioned, this has historical roots. German law recognizes something called "Volksverhetzung", similar to concepts in other national criminal codes in other countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
You can probably guess which hot button issue it comes up with in context the most often (if not: Holocaust denial).
Essentially, there was a landmark judgement that certain forms of calling for violence against women publicly can qualify as this, and so may potentially be criminal (this would be decided case by case in an actual trial, of course).
I can completely understand coming from the perspective of the First Amendment US system and having a different opinion on this. As a crude analogy, it's a bit like Americans love their free market while Europeans usually think a bit more regulation of capitalism is a sane thing to do. It's going to be difficult to agree across the pond.
These things exist on a gradient. Note that plenty of other intact democracies are much stricter than Germany, e.g. South Korea where legal action against online hate speech occurs at a far larger volume, and comes together with far more tracking infrastructure and lack of anonymity on the internet (e.g. since everyone has a client cert for online commerce). And you know what? Many South Koreans want internet hate speech and trolling and bullying policed even much harder.
In Germany there is constant, sometimes quite heated debate on the reach of the application of the Volksverhetzung idea. I think that's very good and have had different opinions across various cases.
> Will you think its still a good use of your tax money when the opposition is putting you in a police car for this exact HN comment?
I know the legislative and political processes of my country well enough to know the long process it would take to get there. If I see things slide in the wrong direction, you bet I'll vote or take to the streets on that issue, too.
A country is a process that takes active participation. It's not a black or white thing you settle one time.
by sho_hn
12/30/2025 at 6:50:58 AM
What's you position on criminal prosecution and house searches for insults of politicians?https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/08/05/german-politic...
> The offence means that in certain cases, criticism of the government that constitutes insult or defamation against political figures is subject to criminal prosecution in Germany.
> Specifically, Section 188 was amended by law, adding "insult" to the offence in addition to "defamation" and "slander". The offence was also extended to include local politicians.
> Robert Habeck of the Greens, for example, filed 805 criminal complaints. The Greens' Annalena Baerbock filed 513, Marco Buschmann of the FDP 26, and Boris Pistorius of the SPD 10, among others.
> Politicians from other parties such as the CDU and AfD have also filed criminal complaints against insults from citizens.
> This includes AfD leader Alice Weidel, who has filed hundreds of complaints for insults online and has also made use of Section 188, even though her party is in favour of abolishing it.
> CDU leader Friedrich Merz, before he became chancellor, had also filed several criminal complaints for insulting behaviour, which in some cases led to house searches.
by alexey-salmin
12/30/2025 at 2:23:37 PM
I think the insult prosecution goes in most cases too far. For me the difference is that Volksverhetzung targets entire groups and raises sentiment against them, while these insults are individual, and public persons are already special-cased in some other ways. I also think the people pressing charges are usually doing themselves no favors, when this is covered in the press they usually end up looking like power-abusing bullies.by sho_hn
12/31/2025 at 10:32:17 AM
Do you mean that the law is OK, just the prosecution somehow goes too far? Or the law itself allowing prosecution of insults is the problem?by alexey-salmin