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Telegram now censoring channels in Germany for “violating local laws”
- dang 5y agoWe have deep respect for German and other languages, but HN is an English-language site, so posts here need to be in English. That may require waiting until a good English-language article appears, but the more significant the topic is, the more (and sooner) this is likely to happen. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20english%20language%20site&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- amai 5y agoIncidentally the German company DeepL is not only widely known for offering the best machine translation quality, but they also offer a plugin to translate websites: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deepl-translate-beta-vers/cofdbpoegempjloogbagkncekinflcnj https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deepl-translate-be... Wunderbar!
- stereoradonc 5y agoUse Vivaldi for auto-translate!
- 2-718-281-828 5y agoOr rather Vivaldolf ... (just kidding, just kidding!)
- fulafel 5y agoThis seems like an outdated policy now that people use machine translation to read foreign language sites as normal part of their web browsing flow.
- 2-718-281-828 5y agoDas ist jetzt unsere Seite.
- cultofmetatron 5y agoIf they are holocaust deniers, As much as I love free speech, I can understand where the german government is coming from. we can't allow THAT to ever happen again. This will probably get flagged or downvoted to oblivion but meanwhile, no one bats an eye at the worldwide brushing under the rug of the Palestinian Apartheid.
- estranhosidade 5y agoThe article is written in German, but with a Google Translate you can understand the just of it. Apparently Telegram added a new blocking system based on phone numbers, sorta a geo-blocking thing, and people with German phone numbers registered on their Telegram accounts aren't able to access those blocked channels. Also, unlike the previous block this one applies even to the users who are using the app downloaded directly from Telegram site and not the iOS/Google Play version. The blocking happens after German minister of interior had a meeting with Telegram directors a few days ago.
- pessimizer 5y agoProbably makes sense. I'm not super familiar with Telegram, but to know a channel is doing stuff that's against German law probably means that someone with access to the channel reported it to authorities. Germany is also one of those countries that blanket bans particular groups/parties in general, which the US didn't really do until after 9/11. Banning a group chat isn't much different.
- skrause 5y ago> Germany is also one of those countries that blanket bans particular groups/parties in general You make it sound like Germany is constantly banning political parties. There have been exactly two bans of political parties in the post-war history of Germany: A nazi party in 1952 and a communist party in 1956. Also don't forget who occupied Germany in this decade and made a lot of its decisions.
- pessimizer 5y agoBut there are many banned named groups. Germany is not unique in this. That's a thing foreign to the US that Americans may not understand, which is why I mentioned it. I can start a group called the "Destroy The Government Now Neo-Nazis" in the US with no fear that it will ever be banned.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
- GamerUncle 5y agoAs always German laws are a mess and they want to bend freedom. Anyway change to signal it was always the superior option.
- mccorrinall 5y agoDoes signal have one-to-many communication? (like telegram channels)
- i67vw3 5y agoSignal has groups, telegram has groups and channels. Signal has normal groups like WhatsApp, where you configure the settings so that only admins can send messages, then it might slightly become like telegram channels. Telegram is probably the only tech in world, which has this unique mechanism of communicating. Cloud backup, groups/channels, anonymous usernames, e2e encryption feature (1 to 1, not by default), censorship resistance more than other messaging/social media companies, all bundled together.
- Canada 5y agoNot in a way that achieves the same purpose as Telegram. Telegram is like Twitter, which is well suited for interaction with people you don't know. No wasted effort on security since everyone is speaking in public anyway. Signal groups are poor at that. The work required to encrypt messages increases with group members. People don't want to show their phone numbers in large public groups, and Signal also lacks the group admin/moderation options necessary to handle many hundreds or thousands of members.
- mccorrinall 5y agoThen I don't think that Signal is a viable alternative in this case. Atilla Hildemann used his channel as a one-to-many broadcast. He doesn't want a group chat.
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- jevoten 5y agoAvoid censorship with this one weird trick: Print the information in a book, and put it in a library, or even on a school curriculum, if you can. If anyone tries to remove the book, then we are back to the dark ages of book banning or even burning. You know who else burned books, right? On the other hand, if the book is prevented from being published or stocked in the first place, if school or public libraries simply refuse to carry it, teachers don't assign it, or if the information is not in book form, nobody cares.
- Hasnep 5y agoIf you're referring to the recent books like Maus being removed from the school curriculum in America, they were banned for things like containing nudity and rude words. From what I can tell from the auto-translated version of the article, these Telegram posts were removed in Germany for breaking German law. Whether you think the German law is correct is a different issue.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- colechristensen 5y agoGermany bans things like Holocaust denial and certain things about far right political parties. It’s not the American way but I’m quite ok with Germany doing this.
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- VWWHFSfQ 5y agoWhy do the German people allow their government to do this kind of stuff? Do they want it?
- colechristensen 5y agoA lot of it is about banning Nazis. What do you think?
- thgaFa 5y ago[flagged]
- YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y agoNo we are talking about real Nazis the stuff we are talking about is unconstitutional in Germany.
- zaarn 5y agoIn this case it applies to a real nazi who's denying the Holocaust and spreading some barely-not-eugenics rhetoric... Not just "some truckers".
- delecti 5y agoThat's pretty "no true Scottsman". Some of the Ottawa protesters are waving swastika flags. If it walks like a duck and waves duck flags. Sources citing the presence of swastika flags, (linking multiple because a couple are paywalled): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/canada/ottawa-truckers-protest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/canada/ottawa-truck... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/thousands-protest-covid-mandates-and-restrictions-in-ottawa/2022/01/29/40a784b4-8133-11ec-8cc8-b696564ba796_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/thousands-protest-covid... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ottawa-covid-trucker-protest-mayor-declares-state-emergency-rcna15111 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ottawa-covid-trucker-prot...
- gkalrq 5y ago
- GameOfFrowns 5y agoTelegram was lauded by our (Germany's) public broadcasting channels as an important tool for protesters to organize against the current regime in Belarus. They apparently do not like when it happens at home too.
- ausbah 5y agothere's protesting then there's Neo-Nazis protesting, I don't think Germany tolerates the latter
- EGreg 5y agoThis is what happens when you have a centralized software. Germany can just get the app removed from app stores: https://voi.id/en/technology/114013/senior-german-official-asks-telegram-to-be-removed-from-app-store-and-play-store-accused-of-protecting-extremis https://voi.id/en/technology/114013/senior-german-official-a... And this is true of other centralized software: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/18/the-freest-platform-on-the-web https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/18/the-freest-platform-...
- sva_ 5y agoHmm, but if your app was decentralized, they could still remove it from the app stores? Which would effectively prevent 95% of people from using it, probably.
- EGreg 5y agoNo, decentralized distribution is achieved for example when you have widgets hosted on many sites, which all have https so you're not sure what they're hosting for private visitors unless you create an account. It's hard to ban all those sites. Telegram actually has such widgets, but they prefer to rely on everyone downloading their main app. Moxie also complains that decentralized stuff is slow to change.
- xfalcox 5y agoBrazil supreme court is toying with the idea of banning Telegram before this years presidential election, as they were ignored by the Telegram team. I wonder if Telegram will adopt the same thing they did in Germany here in Brazil to prevent the ban...
- kmeisthax 5y agoCan't read German, but I'm going to assume the channels in question are full of neo-Nazis. If that's the case then this isn't anything particularly new; Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis. I don't find this particularly objectionable on it's own; Nazis and neo-Nazis never believed in free speech to begin with. However, we should still remain wary of false positives or scope creep beyond this narrow carve-out.
- sascha_sl 5y agoThey're certainly very adjacent, but the general trend is more into conspiracy theorists / new world order and anti-corona measures with a tendency to call for violence.
- hutzlibu 5y ago"Germany's constitution explicitly denies freedom of speech to Nazis." Not exactly like this. You are allowed to speak your mind as a Nazi. You may say you are a Nazi and also say why you think they are superior etc. blablabla. You are not allowed, to wear certain symbols of NS times (swastika and co) and you are not allowed to deny that the holocaust happened and to glorify certain SS organisations.
- sascha_sl 5y agoWhile it is not the constitution, but the criminal code, being a nazi without at least a basic veil of decency will get you jailed for publicly voicing your beliefs: Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace: incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population, shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years. (§ 130 StGB Volksverhetzung) What you were referencing is §86 and §86a StGB.
- sascha_sl 5y agoTelegram is not "violating local laws". They are simply violating local laws.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoFreedom is contagious. Can't have too much of that free thinking going on.
- anthk 5y agoAh, yes, "censoring" neonazis. Eh no. The US would do the same with a Telegram/Snapchat group hosting AlQaeda supporters.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- frankfrankfrank 5y agoThis is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them. What this is all about is incremental conditioning towards normalizing censorship for "local law" violations … the same kinds of wanton "laws" conjured up by all the dictatorial regimes that all the western societies are quickly drifting towards. The German government has even tried attacking Gab, and regardless of what you may think of Gab, it is not a good thing if you do not want to find yourself one day having overslept living in a totalitarian regime. Just consider the implications of a foreign government taking action against a US website, wholly based in the USA, because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land (Constitution), and are in line with all principles of human rights. It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA or even just negatively discussing actions and behaviors of Americans, just as much as it would be evil for anyone else to do that. We are entering a really dangerous situation where people are sleepwalking into supporting authoritarianisms, simply because they are conditioned to think they are part of the in-group. But that never lasts once the trap doors are slammed shut. You either support freedom, free speech, and human rights or you don't; there is no freedom and human rights light.
- zaarn 5y ago>This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them. They are. The operators of the channel have an open arrest warrant for inciting hatred, denying the holocaust and death threats against public and private persons. > wholly based in the USA because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land, and are in line with all principles of human rights. That changes when the "wholly USA" website is being used by German citizens, who are under jurisdiction. >It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA I's not about "disparaging things about the <country>", it's about running a website or service and not reacting to the fact that actual nazis are using the service. (You know with the eugenics and everything!) If you think stopping nazis is authoritarianism, then you'd be the same kind of person that lets authoritarianism bootstamp all over them in the name of freedom. (Paradox of Tolerance)
- throwaway2037 5y agoMy comment will appear abstract compared to the vast majority of free speech-related comments. I read the article translated into English: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&u=https://netzpolitik.org/2022/nach-gespraechen-mit-bundesregierung-telegram-sperrt-erstmals-kanaele-in-deutschland-wegen-lokalen-gesetzesverstoessen/&client=webapp https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&u=h... Then, I went to read this person's Wiki page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Hildmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_Hildmann He sounds like a reasonable person until 2015. I am not a psychiatrist, but this person sounds like they are descending into serious mental illness. How else do you go from a health food public persona... publish multiple cookbooks on the matter, the descend into some kind of 1980s "crazy person" talking about Holocaust denial, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, etc.? This person needs help from mental health professionals. Plain and simple. Please do not read this post as someone apologising for anti-semitic comments -- directly or indirectly. No, I reject (200%!) anti-semitic comments from _mentally healthy people_. This person has gone "over the edge"! Does anyone else feel the same as me? I hope his family can get him help. He should go back to healthy cookbooks and forget about all the crazy conspiracy theories...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- amai 5y agoThe article also notes: The channels are only blocked, if you have a German phone number. If you have an Austrian phone number you can still read them.