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Everything declines in germany except for fascism
And housing costs.
The fight against fascism in the civilian population does not
What was the reason for Germany’s 3-point drop in its internet freedom score according to the report cited in the linked news article?
The study said that authorities in Germany sought legal action against people who pilloried politicians.
The report made a mention of criminal prosecutions in Germany over memes about politicians, seemingly pointing to the case of an editor of a publication affiliated to the far-right AfD.
Which is not entirely wrong. Case Andi Grote Major of Hamburg and Number 1 Pimmel, PimmelGate. Which is a whole big number about state power abuse and power tripping over months. A real good “wall-head-banging”-story about a politicians hurt fee fees for being called a dick.
Another one always cited is an AfD Guy that, so the story always is told, got a house search due to mocking of Robert Habeck, former Vice-Chanclor and Economic minister as well as leader of the Green Party. How ever he was actually house searched for posting nazi stuff which is against the law.
Despite that i wouldnt call that a decline of internet freedom. Most lawsuits going out due to internet stuff is because that posting really is often anything but “a joke”. We are talking death threats, and such a like
Yeah, this far-right AfD which is heavily supported by China and Russia. And another point is that attacks by hackers with ties to the Russian state also contributed to the drop in Germany.
Yeah really unfortunate. They have these disinformation campaigns and try to empower the nastiest politicians to destabilize our society. Then they spy on other politicians, there’s cyberattacks, they burn down our DHL logistics facilities, sabotage natural gas reserves and do whatever they can do. There was something with marine ships and we’re still not sure about a plethora of things. For example who occasionally cuts those glass fibre cables to sabotage the trains and then all commuters can’t get to work. They spread terror and all of this is in fact effective. And then of course Putin wages war and forces us to spend a large pile of money on the military, weapon systems and all the nasty stuff and I always like to believe there’s better things to invest in than death machinery. But hey.
There’s really this general societal trend demanding to feel more safe. And it’s detrimental to freedom. Then we have blind activism, people who deliberately exploit this to push for their surveillance state fetish, people who entirely decoupled from reality and they’d like fascism now. We’ve also not started to tackle all these bubbles on social media and all the misinformation out there. And then we’re bound to get more fake stuff with AI. Idk other countries ban porn these days or have the payment providers do it for them. Others experiment with a clean internet and age restriction in a way that causes quite some collateral damage and their independent internet forums are forced to close. I think we’re somewhat bound to be headed in the same direction.
But glad to see how we’re still very free. I don’t think we should resign, we need to address this. And btw, I think I spot some of the same dynamics here on the Threadiverse. We’re close enough to social media so we have the some of the same culture war here. And we don’t just use it to communicate freely, but there’s a good amount of people pushing their agenda, banning each other because they’re supposed zionists or the opposite of it, or pro or conta Artificial Intelligence and people urge people to take some extreme positions, so these bubbles don’t really align with internet freedom or empower people or guide them in any positive direction. It’s a tough nut to crack. But I think we’re all involved in this trend. It’s not just imposed on us from above. But that also means we can shape it. (And at least in theory that’s also how politics should work.)
To provide a bit more content on the study by Freedom House a brief summary:
- In Germany, factors including criminal prosecutions for memes about politicians, increased self-censorship due in part to threats from far-right actors, and attacks by hackers with ties to the Russian state contributed to a 3-point drop in the country’s internet freedom score.
- Globally, the internet freedom declined for the 15th consecutive year. Kenya (−6), Venezuela (−4), and Georgia (−4) experienced the year’s most severe declines on the report’s 100-point scale. Bangladesh (+5) earned the year’s strongest improvement.
- China and Myanmar, each with a total score of 9, remained the world’s worst environments for internet freedom.
- Iceland (94) held its place as the freest online environment, followed by Estonia (91), falling scores also for Serbia and Nicaragua.
[Edit to include the link.]
including criminal prosecutions for memes about politicians,
It’s worth mentioning that Germany has strong laws against defamation etc, compared to US for example. There’s various freedoms as well, but from publishing personal criticism into personal insults, in some aspects, it’s significantly different. It’s to protect people from unwarranted public humiliation and hate speech. But at times, it can be weaponized as well.
