[germanier]

To make this clear: Nobody in Germany requested a takedown of that subreddit. A German agency (BPJM) sent Reddit a letter with a few questions about that subreddit. Reddit then blocked the site for German IPs but it was not requested to do so.

The BPJM does not have authority to block foreign websites. They do maintain a (non-public) list of websites deemed harmful to the youth which e.g Google uses to not show certain sites to German users. They planned to add that subreddit to this list.

That's quite far from censoring but rather Reddit censoring itself.

[girvo]

> That's quite far from censoring but rather Reddit censoring itself.

While you're completely correct, and this case is exactly that, the end result is the same isn't it?

[kuschku]

Not really, because reddit had a choice not to censor itself. The result would have been that /r/watchpeopledie would be not findable in German Google with safe search on, and that it would be blocked in all schools, and if you install a family blocker software at home.

[germanier]

I'm not sure but I thought that Google doesn't show websites listed in the BPJM-Modul at all in Germany, even with safe search off. Does anyone know whether this is documented somewhere?

[kuschku]

I’m not sure either, but I know that legally, they can show that stuff.

[Lawtonfogle]

Reddit really has a really hard to follow rule as to what content is or isn't allowed.

[germanier]

The point here is that the subreddit works fine almost everywhere in the world. Just if you try accessing it with a German IP Reddit voluntarily decided not to return content.

[Lawtonfogle]

I was thinking more along the lines of what subreddits they still allow and what subreddits have been banned (or at least 'encouraged' to go private).

[germanier]

They can hardly argue legal compliance as a reason, when they go beyond what's legally required of them.