I’ve been on some (Romanian-language) Telegram channels in which there was outright Nazis sharing Hitler memes and talking about genociding the non-whites.
They use Telegram because Facebook and reddit are better at stopping hate speech.
/pol users on 4chan have been posting nazi and white power shit for the better part of two decades and nobody seems to care about them even though the website is accessible to everyone.
As much as far right extremism is on the rise, i simply cant support censorship or outright banning of apps or content. Especially not when the only thing telegram has going for it, is that the goverment cant spy on you.
Sigh, what a waste of time. Ban them on telegram and they will go somewhere else … this is a fight against windmills.
Instead of trying to ban their platforms which will only result in them looking like martyrs or oppressed, try to rip out the root and don’t give these people any reason to become far-right in the first place.
so they just switch to a different app?
Freedom of speech has not to be interfered with, however stupid that speech may be. That’s just giving the like of Putin and Xi an excuse for censorship of their own.
Certain Telegram channels are being blocked and a few individuals are being put on trial for serious rights violations. Neither is Telegram itself being banned, nor has the offender in the article even been judged or sentenced.
If a democracy is not allowed to defend the rights and lives of its citizens as well as persecuting hate speech and calls for violence against its people, including politicians, the police or minority groups, it is failing in its fight against anti-democratic movements like fascism, racism and authoritarianism.
The internet is global – but that doesn’t mean that no individual country can at least try to enforce its laws when perpetrators are nationals, citizens or residents of that country. This is not like what is happening to Assange. This is Germans having to accept the consequences of their actions.
Libertarians may moan and whine when it comes to Germany’s reasonable limits to what is considered free speech. But these limits have been put in place to safeguard against the next Hitler or the next Stalin. So people may have to watch out for who it is they are potentially aligning themselves with. Our democracy is anything but defenseless against its enemies from within – very much unlike what the US is doing to themselves at the moment.
Germany is going back to its totalitarian roots, arresting people for having the wrong opinions.
9 comments
> German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that Hildmann’s channels were *only restricted for German users*.
Anti-Semitic, far-right and disinformative channels are not as bad as [Navalny’s bot](https://www.rferl.org/a/telegram-navalny-smart-voting/31466263.html
)
Durov is so cool
I’ve been on some (Romanian-language) Telegram channels in which there was outright Nazis sharing Hitler memes and talking about genociding the non-whites.
They use Telegram because Facebook and reddit are better at stopping hate speech.
/pol users on 4chan have been posting nazi and white power shit for the better part of two decades and nobody seems to care about them even though the website is accessible to everyone.
As much as far right extremism is on the rise, i simply cant support censorship or outright banning of apps or content. Especially not when the only thing telegram has going for it, is that the goverment cant spy on you.
Sigh, what a waste of time. Ban them on telegram and they will go somewhere else … this is a fight against windmills.
Instead of trying to ban their platforms which will only result in them looking like martyrs or oppressed, try to rip out the root and don’t give these people any reason to become far-right in the first place.
so they just switch to a different app?
Freedom of speech has not to be interfered with, however stupid that speech may be. That’s just giving the like of Putin and Xi an excuse for censorship of their own.
Certain Telegram channels are being blocked and a few individuals are being put on trial for serious rights violations. Neither is Telegram itself being banned, nor has the offender in the article even been judged or sentenced.
If a democracy is not allowed to defend the rights and lives of its citizens as well as persecuting hate speech and calls for violence against its people, including politicians, the police or minority groups, it is failing in its fight against anti-democratic movements like fascism, racism and authoritarianism.
The internet is global – but that doesn’t mean that no individual country can at least try to enforce its laws when perpetrators are nationals, citizens or residents of that country. This is not like what is happening to Assange. This is Germans having to accept the consequences of their actions.
Libertarians may moan and whine when it comes to Germany’s reasonable limits to what is considered free speech. But these limits have been put in place to safeguard against the next Hitler or the next Stalin. So people may have to watch out for who it is they are potentially aligning themselves with. Our democracy is anything but defenseless against its enemies from within – very much unlike what the US is doing to themselves at the moment.
Germany is going back to its totalitarian roots, arresting people for having the wrong opinions.