this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
23 points (87.1% liked)
Progressive Politics
2711 readers
631 users here now
Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)
(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I know. I wonder if Mastodon has a complete set of terms of service somewhere, because the rules there look more like a summary to me and it's not written in legalese. I would have expected a company to have more fine print...
I can just tell you how it is. Ultimately, Mastodon (who operate the server) are a German company (a non-profit). And as such they have to abide by German law. And you can look it up, it has a specific paragraph on what you did. In fact a lot of countries have holocaust denial rules, in some it's part of hate speech. But Germany is pretty strict, because of history. Unless it includes several million dead people, and then the specific methods the nazis used, and is meant to eradicate all jews, gypsies, disabled people, gay people... You can't say it's the holocaust. You can't even compare it. So what you did will be deemed illegal. They do have a really bad death machinery set up. It's just not the same one. So you need to say this. And I don't think it matters what you were trying to say. I believe with hate speech laws, it's about how it can be perceived by your audience. If they can be mislead by your claims, or someone feels offended... I think that's what hate-speech laws regulate all around the world. They wouldn't work the other way around since every offender could just say, that's not what I meant, and it's an immediate acquittal for anything. But I'm not a lawyer.
So continue criticising Israel, that's completely fine. Even the German politicians in the parliament do that nearly every day, these days. Just don't be stupid and directly violate law, or a post needs to be removed. A company (or even Fediverse admin) can't forward such a post to your followers, they'd be liable for spreading it. Whether they wanted or not...