Feddit.org announced today that they are changing their rules to match German law despite their server not being hosted in Germany.
Feddit.org now bans
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The sentence “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”
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Comparing Israel to the Nazis
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Calls to end Zionism
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Calling for the dissolution of Israel
And much more. The full original post can be found here, or
Click here for full text of original post:
Hi.
In the past few days, discontent regarding mod decisions in this community has been brewing, particularly when it comes to comments on Palestine, Israel, and Israeli politics and actions. There are also misunderstandings regarding mod intention and German law. We hope to clear that up with this post.
While the servers of feddit.org are in Austria, most of the mods of this community as well as admins of this server live in Germany. Speaking of, our server admins have also posted a write-up on the same topic.
And with that, let’s go:
In Germany, antisemitism is specifically sanctioned in German criminal law, both for speech and as a motivation for other criminal behavior. In addition, Germany seeks to protect the Jewish state of Israel (the so-called “Reason of State” introduced in 2008) and thus verges toward protecting Zionism as well. Certain criticism of Israel/Israelis is also categorized as “Israel-related antisemitism”.
Since criminal law is involved, enforcement can mean things like police raids and device confiscations. After such police action, it does not really matter if it was appropriate or if cases are dropped or never charged: The damage is done. All told, it’s not that fun.
There is also no point in engaging in discussions about the veracity of statements that could get us into legal trouble. In addition, we believe that you can express most opinions without breaking rules.
If your comment contains the following, it will be removed from this community:
- Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
- Calling for a destruction, annihilation, an end of all Zionism or the like.
- Equating Israeli actions and (historical) Nazism.
- The slogan “from the river…”
- Endorsement of or justifications for Hamas or Hezbollah, or slogans or graphics positively referring to these organizations. These are considered terrorist organizations in Germany.
- … and obviously: Any of the common antisemitic tropes or calls to violence against Jews or Israelis
Comments will not be removed for the following:
- Denouncing genocide.
- Denouncing Israeli war crimes.
- Criticizing Zionism as an ideology or political movement.
- Referring to the current Israeli government as “criminal,” “expansionist,” or “far-right”.
If your comment is removed nonetheless, these are not the reason. I’d also like to stress that this community was never a free-speech-absolutist zone: It is a (usually lightly) moderated community. There may also be times when bans go too far. In such cases, please DM the @[email protected] account (which all mods have access to).
To help you understand why, I'll leave an assortment of sources here (translations via DeepL).
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Berlin in mid-May [2024] around 6 o’clock in the morning. A loud, continuous “banging” against the apartment door wakes student Alina T. from her sleep. […] When her husband opens the door, several LKA officers, two employees of the district office and the SEK “storm” past him into the apartment. Puzzled, he looks at the search warrant. […] The background to this was a Facebook entry in the student’s profile: "From the river […]
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In November 2023, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs also issued a prohibition order against Hamas.[60] According to the order, “the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea’ (in German or other languages)” is a distinguishing mark of Hamas[61]. […] the current legal situation [regarding “Denial of Israel’s right to exist”] is - contrary to what the statements of the Federal Ministry of Justice suggest[63] - anything but clear. Whether incitements to eliminate the State of Israel are prosecuted depends on the respective legal opinion and the prosecution will of the respective public prosecutor’s office.
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Press release from the previous government:
In this context, Section 111 StGB, which covers public incitement to commit crimes, may also be relevant. Incitement to extinguish Israel’s existence by force may be punishable under this provision. The same applies to calls to publicly display the Hamas flag. If Hamas attacks are publicly cheered and celebrated, this may also be punishable. This means that people who cheer on Hamas’s actions or publicly express their sympathy with the attacks may constitute the criminal offence of “approval of criminal acts” under Section 140 of the German Criminal Code (StGB).
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In connection with the controversial Palestine Congress in Berlin, the German authorities have also imposed an entry ban on former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. “In order to prevent antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda at the event”, several entry bans have been issued, the news agency AFP learned from security sources on Sunday. One of these concerned Varoufakis. (Notably, Varoufakis would have spoken about one-state solutions …)
federal reverse (on behalf of the mods of !europe)
What’s interesting is that I got blatantly being called a nazi by those particular mods. I reported to admins and nothing happened.
So obviously there’s a double filter here about “not tolerating accusations of nazism”.
I just left, blocked [email protected] and became very wary of feddit.org administration. So this doesn’t take me as much as a surprise as I have already seen issues with both that community and an admin team that’s clearly not objective when talking about that community admins.
Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular
This part floored me. As if it wasnt Israel that was currently denying equal rights to Palestinians and not the other way around… this is just the zionist version of ‘all lives matter’ bullshit.
Genuine freak shit. Maybe wait until the government bothers you, don’t preempt them
Says the person not at risk of early moring police raids of their home including months long confiscation of all their communication devices and costly legal proceedings to get them back.
I’m a communist trans woman with guns who houses refugees for free in the USA
That’s enough for me to block my first instance! Fucking Nazis.
I am curious about the reactions in the thread linked in the OP, but I can’t access it. I don’t know if the thread is deleted either since I can’t access even the server.
Are they temporarily down?
EDIT:
False alarm. I was able to access it after some struggle. I don’t know why I can’t access it in my desktop but I was able to access it via mobile. At any rate, it’s a problem on my end.
Reading the linked post, I’m glad to note that it seems to me that the consensus is largely against the change. Even the few comments from those in the instance is pretty much against it.
You know what? I’m gonna pro Palestine even harder
Time to defederate Feddit.org.
To bad. They weren’t that bad, IME. But denying criticism of a state actively carrying out a globally recognized genocide… that’s a strict rule I’ve adopted.
If midwest.social won’t defederate, I’ll have to block the whole instance.
The post literally says that you can critizise that 🤦
Please understand that there can be some nuance on the topic and that people in Germany are understandably extra careful on the topic.
Wow, real mask off moment, though they were using the “German law” pretext for a while now.
While the servers of feddit.org are in Austria, most of the mods of this community as well as admins of this server live in Germany… Since criminal law is involved, enforcement can mean things like police raids and device confiscations.
Lol, they’re trying to pretend that the cops will kick down their doors if someone says “free Palestine” on a server they’re mods of.
I live in Germany, and it’s a totally realistic scenario, especially in Bavaria. They seize computers to intimidate digital activists all the time for way less serious topics.
You’re not keeping up with the news from Germany then I take it.
I know that they’re repressing opposition to Israel, but I have not heard of them arresting someone just for being a moderator on a website that doesn’t follow German law.
The moderators less likely, but the server admins quite likely, as those are legally responsible for the publication. Where the server is physically located is actually of lesser relevance in that regard.
The write-up they link is also insightful. Notably, they “explicitly reject these accusations” of being Zionists and insist it’s a legal precaution required by their countries.
I’ve bought servers for hosting some small communities and I sometimes thought maybe I was paranoid for retaining anonymity and carefully picking the country and company to allow muh freedoms as far as speech goes, but it’s interesting seeing .world and feddit pull out the “just following legislation” card (which is understandable, given that staff imprisonment is obviously bad for their community, but also irresponsible and complicit to simply accept the situation instead of resolving it, and because this is an internet community there are safe ways to resolve it).
Feddit.org was not started as an law-skirting activist space with specific op-sec requirements.
My impression when talking with the admins is that they are quite sympethatic to such efforts, but simply ask that to be done somewhere else where it is safer for everyone involved.
Then they should be ranting about how terrible the law is, not defending it.
How much ranting do you think they will be able to do from inside a jail cell?
It’s not illegal to rant about the injustice of these laws… Jfc
It is however illegal for them to allow such material to remain on their servers once they’re made aware of it.
No it isn’t, the server isn’t hosted in Germany
This is false. The German police will contact the Austrian one, who will share the contact details of the persons legally responsible for publication, and if those happen to be residents of Germany, the Austrian laws are irrelevant to what the German police does.
Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
Calling for a destruction, annihilation, an end of all Zionism or the like.
Zionism means colonialism not just in practice, but from its very inception:
Yes, and you are free to critizise Zionism for that on Feddit.org. The legal problem is not that, but that the German authorities don’t play word games and tend to equate Zionism/Israel/Jews as a shortcut and leave it to courts to decide later if that was justified or not.
Cool, I’ll add them to my ban list.
Didn’t blaja already defed them?
Better yet I am trying to get them to add me to their ban list
They’re going to stand behind the German law on this? smdh
Yikes. 😬
How do I ban an entire instance
Assuming you’re using the default Lemmy UI, there’s a block settings menu in your account settings page. It’s worth exploring, there’s some good options to play around with.
