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:

  • The sentence “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”

  • Comparing Israel to the Nazis

  • Calls to end Zionism

  • 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 @EuroMod@feddit.org account (which all mods have access to).

To help you understand why, I'll leave an assortment of sources here (translations via DeepL).

  • A news report:

    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 […]

  • A legal treatise:

    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.

  • 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).

  • Another news report

    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 …)

  • Overview Germany in 2024 by Amnesty International

  • Overview Germany in 2024 by Human Rights Watch

federal reverse (on behalf of the mods of !europe)

  • woelkchen@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    I think the post in itself is informational, many of the comments are not.

    Post stays, comments get locked.

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    Elad Barashi, who has worked in the Israeli entertainment industry for several years, sparked outrage after posting on X: “Good morning, let there be a Shoa (Holocaust) in Gaza.”

    In another post, he wrote, “I can’t understand the people here in the State of Israel who don’t want to fill Gaza with gas showers… or train cars… and finish this story! Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza.”

  • zeezee@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    I hadn’t noticed how pro-cop some feddit.org users are but a cursory glance at people taking police reporting at face value and then openly defending cops punching people in the face with “it’s out of context” reasoning is just surreal.

    It reeks to me of living in a bubble your whole life and never having experienced police repression - so your only response is “it can’t be the police, they’ve never done anything against me, it must be the protestors that are wrong”

    Usually I’m one that hates leftist infighting but defacto trying to suppress a genocide because the “law says so” is rather weak. Still I totally understand wanting to protect yourself from repression but surely if you cared about both justice and your well being you would just hand over the community to someone else? Unless of course you actually agree with the “law”…

  • MummysLittleBloodSlut@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    I got banned from that community for saying zionism is antisemitic. The mods called it “rage bait”.

    I was actually testing whether the mods are zionists, and since they were enraged by my post, I think they are.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    I don’t think they are actually zionist or pro-genocide. But they are definitely not good mods, and they just didn’t handle it in a good way. It’s not the first time I’ve seen problems with that community moderation team, they tend inho to powertrip. I suppose they are friends or the same people as feddit.org admins and that’s why they defend them so much. But I don’t think that moderation team is up to the task of moderating a big community.

    Nothing wrong with it, moderation is hard, very hard. And not everyone is qualified for it. They should just step back. Or just close the community if they are so heavy censored by their country legislation.

  • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    Just FYI. There’s truth to this, but this post headline is very clickbait.

    You’re still allowed to do things like call out the genocide, call the Israeli government facist etc.

    What you can’t do is stuff like call for a violent overthrow of the state of Israel.

    (Which I disagree with because since the status quo is violence I think violence is justified in overturning it)

    But anyways. It’s less extreme than the headline suggests.

    And also it’s in an effort to comply with German laws. (Which again, I disagree with, but I’m not the one at risk of getting raided here so yeah).

    • IndustryStandard@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      Banning the call to dissolve the genocidal Israeli Apartheid would be akin to saying you can disagree with Donald Trump, but you are not allowed to say that he should be impeached.

      Germans are not allowing the problem nor the solution to be named. Thus they live in a vague haze where both sides are guilty and there is seemingly no solution possible except the full genocide of all Palestinians.

    • Match!!@pawb.socialEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      Huh, the rules amendment in OP says that they can’t say the Israeli government is “expansionist” or “far-right”, why would “fascist” be okay?

      • 3abas@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        7 days ago

        Is you want to understand the spirit of the rules, look no further past the first one:

        Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.

        Why Jewish in particular? How is “equal rights for all people” compatible with “one group of people in particular”?

        Jewish supremacism, Israel and Zionism is Jewish ISIS, and trying to hide that part of Israel and punish any discourse around that problem is fascism.

        They may let you call Israel fascist in passing, but they won’t let you describe its fascism, that is the bannable offense.

  • gigachad@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    Despite all the culture of remembrance, despite all the memorials and despite all the history lessons, the general public is simply not aware of how efficiently, ruthlessly and industrially the Nazis carried out the Holocaust.

    At its peak, in Operation Reinhard, from April to November 1942, 2.5 million Jews were murdered. 10,000 every day. In specially built camps to which people were transported by rail and sent directly to the gas chambers, where there was practically no chance of survival. In Majdanek, over 18,000 people were murdered in 9 hours. By 1945, two thirds of European Jews had been murdered and in the end only the advance of the Allies prevented the rest from being murdered as well.

    This is the much-vaunted singularity of the Holocaust, namely the systematic, industrial murder in special murder factories. This industrial rate of murder is unique in the long history of genocides. Stalin’s camps were cruel, but they were not extermination camps with gas chambers. This also applies to other genocides.

    So if you honestly compare the Gaza War with the Holocaust, you quickly realize that it is something completely different. And anyone who seriously equates the two is trivializing the Holocaust to an extent that almost borders on Holocaust denial. This is guaranteed to lead someone here to call me a “genocide denier”, but: if Israel acted like the Nazis in the Gaza Strip, all the women and children would be dead by now and a few last surviving men would be maltreated to death as work slaves. And yes, we all know why Israel of all places is constantly compared to the Holocaust, even though there is no factual basis.

    *automatically translated from a feddit.org user I very much agree with. Not citing the account himself to not disclose him protecting them from brigading.

      • Takapapatapaka@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        7 days ago

        They never said it’s not a genocide. They said its not the Holocaust. We all agree there is a genocide in Gaza carried out by a far-right Israeli government.

        They never said it’s a matter of number. They halfly imply it though, i agree, but what they actually explicitly said is it’s a matter of it being systemic or not. It’s debatable, the use of daily bombing is both quite industrial and not as efficient as death camps, so it’s perfectly fine to target on that point. But do not hide behind the number things, which we all agree to be dumb, as a way to avoid considering the potential gaps in a comparison between Nazis and Israeli government.

        I think it’s okay to say both have huge similarities that they never should have, but you don’t need them to be 100% the same for the point to be pertinent, so you can accept it when someone points out differences.

    • naught101@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      Saying “the Israeli government is acting like Nazis” is not the same thing as saying that “the current genocide being perpertrated against the Palestinians is equivalent to the Holocaust”. The former sentence can be true regardless of the truth or falsity of the latter sentence.

      • gigachad@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        7 days ago

        While I think calling the Israeli government “Nazis” is a simplification and kind of weakens the meaning of the word Nazi, I absolutely agree with you.

        • naught101@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          7 days ago

          Fair enough. People also use the term for e.g. american fascists. I think it would be reasonable these days treat the word as if it has two meanings, one historical, and one a more general synonym for “fascist”.

  • toothbrush@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    It is because their admins are in Germany and they fear the extreme repercussion that the German State has done recently. Did you even read the post you pasted? Are are you intentionally trying to stir up drama?

    Not everyone lives in safety these days. Fascism has made it hard to do things like host a volunteer run online forum safely. There are cases where the heavily armed SEK arrest people at gun point for this. Do you think online moderators should be required to catch a bullet for your posts?

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    This kind of seems… reasonable? Like, they have and convey a compelling legal reason for needing to do this. There’s plenty of other Lemmy instances where these opinions and statements can be freely expressed. Further, they’re explicitly allowing discourse that conveys similar sentiment but doesn’t go against German law.

    I guess my question is, what’s the objection here?

    • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      Mostly that they host the main Europe-centric comm, !Europe@feddit.org. You can see the problem when criticism of Europe’s most powerful country is censored in said comm, and users banned, for relatively innocuous comments.

      • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
        0·
        7 days ago

        That’s a fair concern; maybe the recourse is just to move the community to a different instance? If the community as a whole is largely in agreement, this shouldn’t be a difficult task. Even less of one if the mods agree.

        • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          0·
          7 days ago

          Germany, and any criticism of Israel, or dealings with thereof, that crosses a somewhat arbitrary (for those of us living outside Germany) line.

    • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      To all you folks who’re downvoting this comment: Are you basing your opinion on OP’s biased, slanted account of this policy, or did you read the actual post from the Feddit admins? You don’t have to answer me, but if it’s the former, maybe self-reflect that you’re here complaining about censorship and propaganda, yet you’re doing so in response to a very propaganda-laden post that misrepresents the actual situation.

    • IndustryStandard@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      They do not. Their servers are not hosted in Germany. If their moderators feel like they would be endangered for not following German law they should step down instead of applying their German censorship to a European server.

      Their moderators and German users appear to proudly agree with these German censorship laws in the comments beneath their post. So the legal part looks more like a convenient excuse.

  • defunct_punk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    Germany looking 80 years in the past like “let’s do that again.”

    Israel is NOT a Jewish state, it’s a Neo-Nazi regime. If I wanted to kill as many jews as possible, I’d convince them that they “belong” in a tiny country surrounded by neighbours who want to destroy them.