In Germany there are some examples for the suppression of speech.
For example popular examples are:
(1) getting your house raided for calling a politician a dick
(2) getting your house raided for calling a politician stupid
(3) most recent, just in this week, a retiree gets into trouble with the police for asking worried questions about migration
These are examples that spontaneously come to my mind. So I can not talk for whatever country you live in but Germany has a problem about being able to express opinions.
(1) Is also because it's literally vandalism.
(2) Also points out that there were posts of holocaust denial, which has been illegal in most of europe for literal decades.
(3) Is an article about an investigation into whether or not the cart was protected by freedom of expression or whether there would be grounds for further trial. Nobody is in trouble yet.
Isn't it convenient how all posts that say something that rhymes with "You can get in trouble in EU country X for just doing Y." The "just" is doing a lot of concealed lifting? None of your three links actually support your assertion.
(1) Calling a politician a dick is vandalism? That's nonsense.
(2) The corresponding prosecutor made clear that his house was raided for calling the politician stupid and NOT for anything else.
You would have known that if you would have read the document I linked to.
To quote it:
Wegen des Tatverdachts einer gegen Personen des politischen Lebens gerichteten
Beleidigung gem. §§ 185, 188, 194 StGB erfolgte am vergangenen Dienstag, 12.11.2024, eine
richterlich angeordnete Durchsuchung der Wohnung des Beschuldigten durch Polizeibeamte
der Kriminalpolizei Schweinfurt
Translated to english:
Due to suspicion of an offence of insulting persons in political life
pursuant to Sections 185, 188, 194 of the German Criminal Code (StGB), a
judicially ordered search of the accused's apartment was carried out last Tuesday, November 12, 2024, by police officers
from the Schweinfurt Criminal Investigation Department.
(3) He is in trouble in terms that there is an police investigation against him and no it is not okay to have police investigations just because a person expressed his worries about migration.
Porn (now requires age verification), online libraries, movies, some news websites, sports (because of obscure copyright laws) and countless other things.
I'm in the UK and can't access https://imgur.com/ - an American service that now refuses to serve content to Britain because "On September 30, 2025, Imgur blocked users from the United Kingdom in response to a potential fine from the Information Commissioner's Office regarding its handling of children's personal data". I presume that means OSA.
It does lend credibility to the blocks when it's US companies trying to dodge fines while mishandling PII. The suggestion of using a US freedom gov to dodge US-based self-censorship is as ironic as it is stupid when the real solution is pay the fine and handle the data properly.
if you are in Germany, try opening ria.ru. It’s not like we are deprived of something worthy - it is Russian propaganda after all, but it tells enough about freedom of speech.
A major porn site's reaction to France requiring age verification was quite funny, they replaced their content by complaints instead of implementing the verification. Liberty isn't always a good thing, allowing teens to simply click to say they're adults doesn't cut it.
You mean the TV station lost broadcasting-rights, or you mean the website it actually banned? Cause the website is certainly accessible for me from my European country, although that does not rule out that it is banned in some European countries.
The website rt.com is banned in the whole EU due to a decret by von der Leyen which bypassed parliament. It's trivial to bypass since it's "only" a DNS block but it's still censorship (no matter how you think about the content of RT). Same for Sputnik and the relevant TV channels.
rt.com works fine in Finland at least. I don't think we have website bans in general aside something like CSAM and copyright reasons, and even the latter at least is rare.
There seems to be a manufactured narrative from the US right how "Europe" is somehow doing large scale censorship.
That seems crazy to me I read news there occasionally as I like to view opposite sides. Go to BBC, RT, France24 ,Al-Jazeera type sites and see what each has as their focus stories.
You're aware news sites are used to push agenda, some more than others, but that's half the interest of seeing what they push. And sometimes the more fringe have stories on what should be news but don't make it to mainstream media channels.
...anyway I'm more a believer in assuming people have a brain and can figure stuff out vs banning sites, both have danger to them but censorship seems the bigger danger to me.
True! Though I can't really say I mourn the loss, it is a Russian propaganda outlet dedicated to helping their expansion war. Is this the speech the USA is going to protect? It's still weird to me that the gringoes are helping the commies now, I guess I'm stuck in the old world order!
The first one I'm ok with, the second one I'm not sure what you're saying? Google suggests the largest library in the world is the US Congress library, but I couldn't find any sources saying it's banned in Germany? (Also, it's a physical place in the US... What?)
Closest thing I could find to library banned in Germany was a collection of pirated material, which was blocked at a DNS level, meaning many users bypass the ban accidentally, and anyone who wants to can trivially use a different DNS.
I mean I'm probably more in favour of digital piracy than the next guy, but I had completely missed that were calling copyright protection censorship now?
Yes, I'm referring to the pirate site, which is the largest collection of books in the history of mankind. Of course it is a bit fringe to talk about censorship when it comes to piracy, but I would say that it is. While noting that the US also censors pirate websites.
Can we filter for current censorship? Hate to brake it to you but the top category in that page, "censorship in the soviet union" does not apply anymore.....
Spanish courts ordered ISPs to block dozens of pro-independence domains and mirror sites during the referendum. Civil Guard units physically entered data centers to seize servers tied to the Catalan government’s digital voting infrastructure.
2) GitHub Repository Takedown (2017)
Spain obtained a court order forcing GitHub to remove a repository that mirrored referendum voting code and site information, extending censorship beyond Spanish-hosted domains.
3) Rapper Convictions for Online Lyrics
Spanish rapper Valtònyc was convicted for tweets and lyrics deemed to glorify terrorism and insult the monarchy; he fled the country and fought extradition in Belgium for years.
⸻
France
4) Blocking of Protest Pages During Yellow Vests (2018–2019)
Authorities requested removals of Facebook pages and livestreams tied to the Yellow Vest protests, citing incitement and public order concerns.
5) Court-Ordered Removal of Election Content (2019 EU Elections)
French judges used expedited procedures under election-period misinformation law to order removal of allegedly false political claims within 48 hours.
6) Prosecution of Political Satire as Hate Speech
Several activists were fined or prosecuted for online posts targeting religious or ethnic groups in explicitly political contexts, even where framed as satire.
⸻
Germany
7) Mass Police Raids Over Social Media Posts
German police have conducted coordinated nationwide dawn raids targeting individuals accused of posting illegal political speech under hate-speech laws.
8) Removal of Opposition Content Under NetzDG
Platforms removed thousands of posts from nationalist or anti-immigration political actors within 24 hours to avoid heavy fines under NetzDG enforcement pressure.
9) Criminal Convictions for Holocaust Commentary Online
Individuals have received criminal penalties for online statements denying or relativizing Nazi crimes, even when framed in broader political debate contexts.
⸻
United Kingdom
10) Police Visits Over Controversial Tweets
British police have conducted “non-crime hate incident” visits to individuals’ homes over political tweets, creating official records despite no prosecution.
11) Arrests for Offensive Political Posts
Individuals have been arrested under public communications laws for posts criticizing immigration or religion in strongly worded terms.
12) Removal of Campaign Content Under Electoral Rules
Election regulators required digital platforms to remove or restrict political ads that failed to meet transparency requirements during active campaigns.
⸻
Italy
13) Enforcement of “Par Condicio” Silence Online
During mandated pre-election silence periods, online political content—including posts by candidates—has been ordered removed or fined.
14) Criminal Defamation Charges Against Bloggers
Italian bloggers critical of politicians have faced criminal defamation prosecutions for investigative posts during election cycles.
⸻
Finland
15) Conviction of Sitting MP for Facebook Posts
Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen was prosecuted for Bible-based comments posted online regarding sexuality and religion; although ultimately acquitted, the criminal process itself was lengthy and high-profile.
⸻
Sweden
16) Convictions for Anti-Immigration Facebook Posts
Swedish courts have convicted individuals for Facebook comments criticizing immigration policy when deemed “agitation against a population group.”
⸻
Netherlands
17) Criminal Case Against Opposition Politician
Dutch politician Geert Wilders was convicted (without penalty) for campaign-rally remarks later amplified online, deemed discriminatory.
⸻
Austria
18) Rapid Court Orders Against Political Posts
Austria’s updated online hate-speech regime enabled expedited court orders compelling removal of allegedly unlawful political speech within days.
⸻
Belgium
19) Prosecution of Political Party Messaging
Members of the Vlaams Belang party have faced legal sanctions for campaign messaging shared online deemed racist or discriminatory.
⸻
Switzerland
20) Criminal Fines for Referendum Campaign Speech
Swiss activists have faced criminal fines for online referendum messaging judged to violate anti-discrimination law during highly contentious votes.
I think part of this is preempting concerns that the EU could ban or limit X / Twitter.
They've already fined X heavily for lacking transparency, like not providing a database of advertisers or allowing researchers to access internal data to evaluate misinformation concerns. The EU has threatened that if they need to they may ban or limit X.
Musk and conservatives view X as a critical tool to spread their preferred ideology, and Musk has shown he's not beyond algorithmic and UX manipulation to achieve desired outcomes.
There's a hate speech / violence law in the UK that is getting some people arrested for saying things like "round up all people of race X, put them into a hotel, and burn the hotel down." People like Joe Rogan and his ilk are re-packaging those examples as "people being arrested for just sharing their opinion."
I don't know what Joe Rogan says or who his ilk are, but this is a pretty extreme characterization of the situation that I don't think is accurate.
For example, UK police track what they consider to be undesirable "non-crime" speech, build databases of people, and intimidate them for these non crimes (knock on their doors, invite them to come to police station, advise them not to say such things, etc). This is quite a new thing, within the past ~10 years.
There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case. They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%.
Even the conviction rate, even if you say yes there are laws to prohibit certain speech, how far is too far? Are these kinds of laws and convictions needed? Why don't all other countries need them? Why didn't UK need them 20 years ago when there was still internet and social media? Is it not concerning to you that we're told this kind of action is required to hold society together? I'm not saying that calls to violence don't happen or should be tolerated, but if it is not a lie that arresting thousands of people for twitter posts and things is necessary to keep society from breaking down then it seems like putting a bandaid on top of a volcano. It's certainly not developing a resilient, anti-fragile society, quite the opposite IMO.
Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
> They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%.
Isn't the conviction rate the number of people convicted divided by the number charged, not the number arrested?
> There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case
Such as?
> Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
Horrible underground extremist? Not so much. More likely just someone who consumes a very particular slice of media that puts a dishonest (at best) spin on situations like this.
In Germany there are some examples for the suppression of speech. For example popular examples are: (1) getting your house raided for calling a politician a dick (2) getting your house raided for calling a politician stupid (3) most recent, just in this week, a retiree gets into trouble with the police for asking worried questions about migration
(1) https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/hamburg-wohnungsdurch... (2) https://www.justiz.bayern.de/media/images/behoerden-und-geri... (3) https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article6996cb47fc148...
These are examples that spontaneously come to my mind. So I can not talk for whatever country you live in but Germany has a problem about being able to express opinions.
(1) Is also because it's literally vandalism. (2) Also points out that there were posts of holocaust denial, which has been illegal in most of europe for literal decades. (3) Is an article about an investigation into whether or not the cart was protected by freedom of expression or whether there would be grounds for further trial. Nobody is in trouble yet.
Isn't it convenient how all posts that say something that rhymes with "You can get in trouble in EU country X for just doing Y." The "just" is doing a lot of concealed lifting? None of your three links actually support your assertion.
(1) Calling a politician a dick is vandalism? That's nonsense.
(2) The corresponding prosecutor made clear that his house was raided for calling the politician stupid and NOT for anything else. You would have known that if you would have read the document I linked to. To quote it:
Translated to english:
(3) He is in trouble in terms that there is an police investigation against him and no it is not okay to have police investigations just because a person expressed his worries about migration.
So, yes my links support my assertion.
5 replies →
> Also points out that there were posts of holocaust denial, which has been illegal in most of europe for literal decades.
The arrest wasn't made for this but for the insulting of a politican. Stop lying. The press has been correcting this case for months.
Porn (now requires age verification), online libraries, movies, some news websites, sports (because of obscure copyright laws) and countless other things.
I’m in the EU and haven’t encountered any of these, except the copyright restrictions - which is really a different matter.
I'm in the UK and can't access https://imgur.com/ - an American service that now refuses to serve content to Britain because "On September 30, 2025, Imgur blocked users from the United Kingdom in response to a potential fine from the Information Commissioner's Office regarding its handling of children's personal data". I presume that means OSA.
It does lend credibility to the blocks when it's US companies trying to dodge fines while mishandling PII. The suggestion of using a US freedom gov to dodge US-based self-censorship is as ironic as it is stupid when the real solution is pay the fine and handle the data properly.
2 replies →
if you are in Germany, try opening ria.ru. It’s not like we are deprived of something worthy - it is Russian propaganda after all, but it tells enough about freedom of speech.
10 replies →
Ooooh, if freedom.gov helped bypass copyrights on sports and streaming websites, that would be fantastic!
True American freedom requires free NFL for all
This is another "in Europe" thing. There's no "in Europe". Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, etc. will all have different rules.
Spaniard here. No, we don't. Every country has different laws. The European Union share some laws but not these.
LaLiga?
1 reply →
A major porn site's reaction to France requiring age verification was quite funny, they replaced their content by complaints instead of implementing the verification. Liberty isn't always a good thing, allowing teens to simply click to say they're adults doesn't cut it.
List please. Surely there is a wiki page you can drop a link to, right?
No?
its wild to me how so much of online america has been radicalized into becoming nothing more that digital curtain twitchers
Russia Today is banned, for one
You mean the TV station lost broadcasting-rights, or you mean the website it actually banned? Cause the website is certainly accessible for me from my European country, although that does not rule out that it is banned in some European countries.
The website rt.com is banned in the whole EU due to a decret by von der Leyen which bypassed parliament. It's trivial to bypass since it's "only" a DNS block but it's still censorship (no matter how you think about the content of RT). Same for Sputnik and the relevant TV channels.
8 replies →
rt.com works fine in Finland at least. I don't think we have website bans in general aside something like CSAM and copyright reasons, and even the latter at least is rare.
There seems to be a manufactured narrative from the US right how "Europe" is somehow doing large scale censorship.
rt.com loads just fine for me. If you want to do research into/get brainwashed by Russian propaganda, nothing is stopping you here.
I'm in Germany and rt.com does not resolve for me. If I use a VPN and access via, say Austria, it does work.
That seems crazy to me I read news there occasionally as I like to view opposite sides. Go to BBC, RT, France24 ,Al-Jazeera type sites and see what each has as their focus stories.
You're aware news sites are used to push agenda, some more than others, but that's half the interest of seeing what they push. And sometimes the more fringe have stories on what should be news but don't make it to mainstream media channels.
...anyway I'm more a believer in assuming people have a brain and can figure stuff out vs banning sites, both have danger to them but censorship seems the bigger danger to me.
True! Though I can't really say I mourn the loss, it is a Russian propaganda outlet dedicated to helping their expansion war. Is this the speech the USA is going to protect? It's still weird to me that the gringoes are helping the commies now, I guess I'm stuck in the old world order!
One is Russian media, just as Russia bans European media.
Also the world's largest library is banned in Germany.
Piracy is illegal in most countries. Unless you mean the American Library of Congress, but that's an American decision, not a European one.
The first one I'm ok with, the second one I'm not sure what you're saying? Google suggests the largest library in the world is the US Congress library, but I couldn't find any sources saying it's banned in Germany? (Also, it's a physical place in the US... What?)
Closest thing I could find to library banned in Germany was a collection of pirated material, which was blocked at a DNS level, meaning many users bypass the ban accidentally, and anyone who wants to can trivially use a different DNS.
I mean I'm probably more in favour of digital piracy than the next guy, but I had completely missed that were calling copyright protection censorship now?
Yes, I'm referring to the pirate site, which is the largest collection of books in the history of mankind. Of course it is a bit fringe to talk about censorship when it comes to piracy, but I would say that it is. While noting that the US also censors pirate websites.
He probably means a famous pirating site, called library dot something.
This site claims to list them out: https://eylenburg.github.io/countries.htm
I cannot vouch for its accuracy but I thought it was interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Censorship_in_Europe
Can we filter for current censorship? Hate to brake it to you but the top category in that page, "censorship in the soviet union" does not apply anymore.....
Spain
1) Catalan Referendum Website Seizures (2017)
Spanish courts ordered ISPs to block dozens of pro-independence domains and mirror sites during the referendum. Civil Guard units physically entered data centers to seize servers tied to the Catalan government’s digital voting infrastructure.
2) GitHub Repository Takedown (2017)
Spain obtained a court order forcing GitHub to remove a repository that mirrored referendum voting code and site information, extending censorship beyond Spanish-hosted domains.
3) Rapper Convictions for Online Lyrics
Spanish rapper Valtònyc was convicted for tweets and lyrics deemed to glorify terrorism and insult the monarchy; he fled the country and fought extradition in Belgium for years.
⸻
France
4) Blocking of Protest Pages During Yellow Vests (2018–2019)
Authorities requested removals of Facebook pages and livestreams tied to the Yellow Vest protests, citing incitement and public order concerns.
5) Court-Ordered Removal of Election Content (2019 EU Elections)
French judges used expedited procedures under election-period misinformation law to order removal of allegedly false political claims within 48 hours.
6) Prosecution of Political Satire as Hate Speech
Several activists were fined or prosecuted for online posts targeting religious or ethnic groups in explicitly political contexts, even where framed as satire.
⸻
Germany
7) Mass Police Raids Over Social Media Posts
German police have conducted coordinated nationwide dawn raids targeting individuals accused of posting illegal political speech under hate-speech laws.
8) Removal of Opposition Content Under NetzDG
Platforms removed thousands of posts from nationalist or anti-immigration political actors within 24 hours to avoid heavy fines under NetzDG enforcement pressure.
9) Criminal Convictions for Holocaust Commentary Online
Individuals have received criminal penalties for online statements denying or relativizing Nazi crimes, even when framed in broader political debate contexts.
⸻
United Kingdom
10) Police Visits Over Controversial Tweets
British police have conducted “non-crime hate incident” visits to individuals’ homes over political tweets, creating official records despite no prosecution.
11) Arrests for Offensive Political Posts
Individuals have been arrested under public communications laws for posts criticizing immigration or religion in strongly worded terms.
12) Removal of Campaign Content Under Electoral Rules
Election regulators required digital platforms to remove or restrict political ads that failed to meet transparency requirements during active campaigns.
⸻
Italy
13) Enforcement of “Par Condicio” Silence Online
During mandated pre-election silence periods, online political content—including posts by candidates—has been ordered removed or fined.
14) Criminal Defamation Charges Against Bloggers
Italian bloggers critical of politicians have faced criminal defamation prosecutions for investigative posts during election cycles.
⸻
Finland
15) Conviction of Sitting MP for Facebook Posts
Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen was prosecuted for Bible-based comments posted online regarding sexuality and religion; although ultimately acquitted, the criminal process itself was lengthy and high-profile.
⸻
Sweden
16) Convictions for Anti-Immigration Facebook Posts
Swedish courts have convicted individuals for Facebook comments criticizing immigration policy when deemed “agitation against a population group.”
⸻
Netherlands
17) Criminal Case Against Opposition Politician
Dutch politician Geert Wilders was convicted (without penalty) for campaign-rally remarks later amplified online, deemed discriminatory.
⸻
Austria
18) Rapid Court Orders Against Political Posts
Austria’s updated online hate-speech regime enabled expedited court orders compelling removal of allegedly unlawful political speech within days.
⸻
Belgium
19) Prosecution of Political Party Messaging
Members of the Vlaams Belang party have faced legal sanctions for campaign messaging shared online deemed racist or discriminatory.
⸻
Switzerland
20) Criminal Fines for Referendum Campaign Speech
Swiss activists have faced criminal fines for online referendum messaging judged to violate anti-discrimination law during highly contentious votes.
3 replies →
I think part of this is preempting concerns that the EU could ban or limit X / Twitter.
They've already fined X heavily for lacking transparency, like not providing a database of advertisers or allowing researchers to access internal data to evaluate misinformation concerns. The EU has threatened that if they need to they may ban or limit X.
Musk and conservatives view X as a critical tool to spread their preferred ideology, and Musk has shown he's not beyond algorithmic and UX manipulation to achieve desired outcomes.
There's a hate speech / violence law in the UK that is getting some people arrested for saying things like "round up all people of race X, put them into a hotel, and burn the hotel down." People like Joe Rogan and his ilk are re-packaging those examples as "people being arrested for just sharing their opinion."
I don't know what Joe Rogan says or who his ilk are, but this is a pretty extreme characterization of the situation that I don't think is accurate.
For example, UK police track what they consider to be undesirable "non-crime" speech, build databases of people, and intimidate them for these non crimes (knock on their doors, invite them to come to police station, advise them not to say such things, etc). This is quite a new thing, within the past ~10 years.
There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case. They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%.
Even the conviction rate, even if you say yes there are laws to prohibit certain speech, how far is too far? Are these kinds of laws and convictions needed? Why don't all other countries need them? Why didn't UK need them 20 years ago when there was still internet and social media? Is it not concerning to you that we're told this kind of action is required to hold society together? I'm not saying that calls to violence don't happen or should be tolerated, but if it is not a lie that arresting thousands of people for twitter posts and things is necessary to keep society from breaking down then it seems like putting a bandaid on top of a volcano. It's certainly not developing a resilient, anti-fragile society, quite the opposite IMO.
Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
Damn I keep forgetting the UK is still located in Europe. Ever since they left the union they feel like their own continent.
Actually they feel like they might secretly be the fifty first state!
> They arrested 12,000 people in 2023 and convicted 1,100 of those. For cases where the evidence is as cut and dried as posts made online, they could only secure convictions in 8% of cases, which seems staggering to me when UK's conviction rate generally is like 80%.
Isn't the conviction rate the number of people convicted divided by the number charged, not the number arrested?
> There have also been other high profile cases of people being arrested for posting things that were not like that burn the hotel down case
Such as?
> Is nobody allowed to be concerned about any of this without being some horrible underground extremist, in your opinion?
Horrible underground extremist? Not so much. More likely just someone who consumes a very particular slice of media that puts a dishonest (at best) spin on situations like this.
14 replies →
Oh, is that what y'all are on about? I'm not too worried then. About Europe.
lol ok https://archive.ph/bdEqK