[blattimwind]

> I find it interesting that platforms are liable for hosting hate speech, but individual users are not liable for creating it.

NetzDG only regulates how platforms that get a lot of complaints about content that is already illegal under existing criminal code have to handle and report those complaints.

[woodpanel]

That is precisely the problem with NetzDG: That a private company effectively becomes judge, jury and executor.

It has been deemed unconstitutional by many experts - and whether it holds up against those claims will have to be decided in the supreme court.

That Arvato, the company running the content-checking centers, is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann isn't helping either: Criticism of the government that gets deleted on Facebook by a pro-government company like Bertelsmann comes with a certain stench.

As comes the fact that the NYT somehow forgets to mention this affiliation and somehow manages it to intertwine this with the "right cause" of post-war Germany's approach to limit free-speech for Nazism.