We are condemned to, every time a list of blocked sites is posted, endure the "hahaha this is great guys a list of pirate sites! bookmarked!!!!" edgy comments.
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 !
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
So basically they mess with DoH ECH config and trigger fallback behavior in the clients. I don't think any browsers do this yet but I think this loophole is not gonna last.
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 =)
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.
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..
Yes, any given domain name (or as non-technical people would think about it, "website" -- any website) could be "blocked" (re-routed to a non-functioning IP, claimed to not exist, other DNS error or malfunction, ?, ???) at any level of DNS (ISP, Local, Regional, Country, ?, ???)
A question your statement so excellently potentially suggests, is:
What's the true extent of the block?
Is it merely a DNS failure -- or are inbound/outbound packets to an IP address actively suppressed and/or modified to prevent TCP/IP connections? (i.e., The Great Firewall Of China, etc.)
You have "Bad Faith Actors" (let's not call them "governments", "countries", "nation states" or even "deep states" -- those terms are so 2024-ish, and as I write this, it's almost 2026! :-) )
Observation: Let's suppose a "Bad Faith Actor" (local or nationwide, foreign or domestic) attempts to block a website. They can accomplish this in one of 3 ways:
1) DNS Block
2) TCP/IP Block, i.e., block TCP/IP4/6 address(es), address ranges, etc.
3) Combination of 1 and 2.
#3 is what would be used if a "Bad Faith Actor" absolutely had to block the "offending" website, no ifs ands or buts!
But... unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us "wee folk"! :-) ), each of these types of blocks comes with problems, problems for them, which I shall heretofore enumerate!
From the perspective of a "Bad Faith Actor":
1) DNS Block -- a mere DNS block of a single domain name is great for granularity that is, it targets that domain name and that domain name alone, and something like this works great when a given company's products and services are directly tied to their website as their brand name (i.e., google.com being blocked in China), but it doesn't work well for fly-by-night websites -- that's because a new domain name pointing to the old IP address can simply be registered...
2) TCP/IP Address / Address Range Block -- The problem with this approach is that while it is more thorough than a simple DNS block, it may also (illegally and unlawfully, I might add!) block legitimate other users, websites and services and businesses which share the same IP or IP address range!
Think about it like this... A long time ago, all of the mail traffic for AOL (America Online), about 600,000 users or so, was coming from a single IP address. Block that IP address, and yes, you've stopped spam from the single user who is annoying you, but you've also (equal-and-oppositely!) blocked 599,999 legitimate users!
So "Bad Faith Actors" -- are "damned if they use the first method, and really damned if they use the second or third methods"... the first method is easily circumventable for non-brand name dependent websites and web services, while the second and third methods risk causing harm to legitimate users, sometimes huge amounts of them... which should be illegal and unlawful by any country's legal standards...
In other words, Countries should read their own sets of laws(!) before contemplating Internet blocks on their Citizens... :-) And not just one country either, all of them!!! :-)
Anyway, an excellent point!
Very thought stimulating -- as you can see by my ramblings! :-)
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)
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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 hahaha
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 list
And yet, the entire beginning of the list, no subdomains listed - so are subdomains for them allowed (unless specifically blocked here)?
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?
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.
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.
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 trouble
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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:
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.
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 team
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.
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)
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)
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.
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.
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.
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).
[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...
> They are considering banning the largest opposition party
Liar. 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.
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.
> 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:
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.
Quad 1/8/9 isn't optimal alternative (too much centralization if everyone uses those by default) but running your own is easy.
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?
Trying to downgrade or strip extensions from any TLS 1.3 connection will simply break the connection.
0: https://community.fortinet.com/t5/FortiGate/Technical-Tip-Ho...
1: https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/symantec-ech-whitepaper (see page 8)
Edit: actually totally possible but you need build quantum computer with sufficient cubits first =)
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.
Yes, any given domain name (or as non-technical people would think about it, "website" -- any website) could be "blocked" (re-routed to a non-functioning IP, claimed to not exist, other DNS error or malfunction, ?, ???) at any level of DNS (ISP, Local, Regional, Country, ?, ???)
A question your statement so excellently potentially suggests, is:
What's the true extent of the block?
Is it merely a DNS failure -- or are inbound/outbound packets to an IP address actively suppressed and/or modified to prevent TCP/IP connections? (i.e., The Great Firewall Of China, etc.)
You have "Bad Faith Actors" (let's not call them "governments", "countries", "nation states" or even "deep states" -- those terms are so 2024-ish, and as I write this, it's almost 2026! :-) )
Observation: Let's suppose a "Bad Faith Actor" (local or nationwide, foreign or domestic) attempts to block a website. They can accomplish this in one of 3 ways:
1) DNS Block
2) TCP/IP Block, i.e., block TCP/IP4/6 address(es), address ranges, etc.
3) Combination of 1 and 2.
#3 is what would be used if a "Bad Faith Actor" absolutely had to block the "offending" website, no ifs ands or buts!
But... unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us "wee folk"! :-) ), each of these types of blocks comes with problems, problems for them, which I shall heretofore enumerate!
From the perspective of a "Bad Faith Actor":
1) DNS Block -- a mere DNS block of a single domain name is great for granularity that is, it targets that domain name and that domain name alone, and something like this works great when a given company's products and services are directly tied to their website as their brand name (i.e., google.com being blocked in China), but it doesn't work well for fly-by-night websites -- that's because a new domain name pointing to the old IP address can simply be registered...
2) TCP/IP Address / Address Range Block -- The problem with this approach is that while it is more thorough than a simple DNS block, it may also (illegally and unlawfully, I might add!) block legitimate other users, websites and services and businesses which share the same IP or IP address range!
Think about it like this... A long time ago, all of the mail traffic for AOL (America Online), about 600,000 users or so, was coming from a single IP address. Block that IP address, and yes, you've stopped spam from the single user who is annoying you, but you've also (equal-and-oppositely!) blocked 599,999 legitimate users!
So "Bad Faith Actors" -- are "damned if they use the first method, and really damned if they use the second or third methods"... the first method is easily circumventable for non-brand name dependent websites and web services, while the second and third methods risk causing harm to legitimate users, sometimes huge amounts of them... which should be illegal and unlawful by any country's legal standards...
In other words, Countries should read their own sets of laws(!) before contemplating Internet blocks on their Citizens... :-) And not just one country either, all of them!!! :-)
Anyway, an excellent point!
Very thought stimulating -- as you can see by my ramblings! :-)
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
https://cuii.info/mitglieder/
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)
Of course I also use Firefox so mostly that just bypasses the system DNS entirely and uses dns over https.
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)
The anti-malware companies won't lobby government to block malware as that would cut into sales of their anti virus/malware.
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
And yet, the entire beginning of the list, no subdomains listed - so are subdomains for them allowed (unless specifically blocked here)?
December 2024, 31 comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42457712
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46338339
Not sure what the state of it is now given that commercial streaming replaced a lot of both.
I guess that makes sense but I never thought about that.
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.
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.
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.
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-...
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.
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?
The German society is insanely divided on a lot of (in this case: political) topics. Better avoid making such generalizations.
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.
The most commonly used index for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
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)
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.
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.
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.
this is called "disinformation"
[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.
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.
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.
Liar. 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.
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.
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...
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.