Hello World,
following feedback we have received in the last few days, both from users and moderators, we are making some changes to clarify our ToS.
Before we get to the changes, we want to remind everyone that we are not a (US) free speech instance. We are not located in US, which means different laws apply. As written in our ToS, we're primarily subject to Dutch, Finnish and German laws. Additionally, it is our discretion to further limit discussion that we don't consider tolerable. There are plenty other websites out there hosted in US and promoting free speech on their platform. You should be aware that even free speech in US does not cover true threats of violence.
Having said that, we have seen a lot of comments removed referring to our ToS, which were not explicitly intended to be covered by our ToS. After discussion with some of our moderators we have determined there to be both an issue with the ambiguity of our ToS to some extent, but also lack of clarity on what we expect from our moderators.
We want to clarify that, when moderators believe certain parts of our ToS do not appropriately cover a specific situation, they are welcome to bring these issues up with our admin team for review, escalating the issue without taking action themselves when in doubt. We also allow for moderator discretion in a lot of cases, as we generally don't review each individual report or moderator action unless they're specifically brought to admin attention. This also means that content that may be permitted by ToS can at the same time be violating community rules and therefore result in moderator action. We have added a new section to our ToS to clarify what we expect from moderators.
We are generally aiming to avoid content organizing, glorifying or suggesting to harm people or animals, but we are limiting the scope of our ToS to build the minimum framework inside which we all can have discussions, leaving a broader area for moderators to decide what is and isn't allowed in the communities they oversee. We trust the moderators judgement and in cases where we see a gross disagreement between moderatos and admins' criteria we can have a conversation and reach an agreement, as in many cases the decision is case-specific and context matters.
We have previously asked moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification when this was suggested in context of murder or other violent crimes. Following a discussion in our team we want to clarify that we are no longer requesting moderators to remove content relating to jury nullification in the context of violent crimes when the crime in question already happened. We will still consider suggestions of jury nullification for crimes that have not (yet) happened as advocation for violence, which is violating our terms of service.
As always, if you stumble across content that appears to be violating our site or community rules, please use Lemmys report functionality. Especially when threads are very active, moderators will not be able to go through every single comment for review. Reporting content and providing accurate reasons for reports will help moderators deal with problematic content in a reasonable amount of time.
CEOs aren't a designated group, they're a voluntary group. And 111 only prohibits advocating unlawful violence. It's perfectly legal in Germany to say that criminals should be locked up. Imprisonment is a violent act, and it's completely legal to advocate it. And criminals, just like CEOs, are not a designated group.
According to the 2nd highest court in Germany that can only be overruled by the constitutional court:
BGH 3 StR 602/14, decision from 2015-04-14
As a layman, CEOs seem to fit that definition due to their economic and professional characteristic.
This Wikipedia article has an extensive number of court cases and resulting applocations and limitations listed, in case you're interested in learning more. The English version is far less detailed, so try translating the whole site, i.e. through Firefox Translate:
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
If criminals are a designated group, and advocating violence against designated groups is illegal in Germany, does that mean it's illegal for Germans to say criminals should be locked up?
Cowabunga!
No, because by definition criminals have already done an act such that their imprisonment is legal, if done by the state.
Imprisonment is a legal act of violence if and only if someone has committed a crime. CEOs, while immoral, do not necessarily break laws.
And yes, calling for a group of people to be imprisoned can fall under Β§130. Again, I am not a lawyer but there have been court decisions about this.
Finally, the fact that lemmy.world distributes content advocating for the killing of CEOs could likely fall under this paragraph because the death sentence itself violates human dignity already.
So you're saying that German law doesn't prohibit all calls for violence, only certain kinds of calls for violence?
Oh don't pretend you know what you are talking about. The German text says "vorbezeichneten Gruppe", for which an alternative translation is "aforementioned group". So the designated groups are "national, racial, religious or ethnic group[s]". So yeah, CEOs aren't a designated group, but not for the reason you pulled out of your ass.
Does that also mean it's legal to advocate violent acts against criminals, such as imprisonment?
What the fuck does that have to do with CEOs being a designated group or not?
But to answer your question, it depends. Specifically if you advocate for "arbitrary measures" against criminals and do it "in a manner likely to disturb the public peace" then it would be illegal under Β§130 StGB. Barring this caveat though it would be legal.
There's no legal responsibility to shut down violent speech in any country and there never will be. All countries will always allow calls for violence.
What? You have just been given two example paragraphs that create a legal responsibility for the German executive to shut down violent speech. Yes, only certain kinds of violent speech as you put it in the sibling thread, but that still falsifies this statement.
It's not a law against violent speech. It's only a rule against certain kinds of violent speech. Calling it a law against violent speech is misleading.
Look if you want to apply an overly broad definition of violent speech to score some weird semantic point, be my guest. But the original point upthread was that incitement to violence specifically, not "violent speech" in general, is outlawed in many countries, among them those that are hosting the .world instance. And that point is very much correct.
Which is all beside my original point, which was that the Β§130 StGB does not work like you boldly claimed it does.
Incitement to violence isn't outlawed in any country. As we've seen, Germany only outlaws incitement to certain forms of violence. Other forms of violence are okay.
Again if you want to see it like that, fine. Doesn't change the fact that people from these countries mean something different than you when they say inciting violence is outlawed. They are obviously referring to their specific laws, that use that specific language, in this case verbatim. The "oh but there are conditionals in that law" bit you are doing here isn't the gotcha you seem to think it is. We are aware of that. And it's not relevant to the original question of there being potential legal consequences for the people hosting the lemmy world instance. So what is even your point?