[mschuster91]

> Probably makes sense. I'm not super familiar with Telegram, but to know a channel is doing stuff that's against German law probably means that someone with access to the channel reported it to authorities.

Avocadolf's channels are public, you could access them on the Telegram web UI even without an account. The German government has tried to get the channel shut down for months now, after Hildmann fled the country and engaged in Holocaust denial (which is a crime here).

The problem is that unlike all other major social networks, Telegram refuses to comply with German laws (in particular the NetzDG) and has refused to name a contact person for the authorities so that egregious violations could be stopped. I read an article that claimed the only form of contact between German authorities and Telegram used to be a bilateral anti-terror coordination with the US FBI, which makes sense given the common problem of radical Islamist terrorism.

[Justsignedup]

The challenge with Telegram is that it has server costs, but it has no income cash flow. They're experimenting. But overall its 100% investment money. And so if they cannot be tried criminally, there's no business loss if they can't take German cash. This is obviously an issue with Facebook who cares about cash quite a bit, or Reddit, or whatever. But not Telegram.

So yeah.

My guess is that at this point Germany is saying that this could fall into the criminal side of things, at which point Telegram would care.

[ajsnigrutin]

> My guess is that at this point Germany is saying that this could fall into the criminal side of things, at which point Telegram would care.

Not sure where telegram is registered, but can a foreign company have a criminal responsiblity by just being accessible in that country? I'm sure most of the internet violates some kind of ancient anti-something law, be it nudity or whatever, but noone really cares if boobs are illegal in afghanistan, why care if something is illegal in germany, if you're an (eg.) british company?

[tpoacher]

I need a huge fact-check on this, but I seem to remember that while the "no cash flow" statement is trivially true, in practice isn't the investment capital already enough to cover several decades of funding?

[tomjen3]

I mean if Telegram doesn't have a business in Germany, why should they care what laws Germany passes?

Porn sites are probably against the law in Saudi Arabia, but why is that Pornhubs problem?

[YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo]

If you want to do business in a country you usually have to follow the laws of the country. If you are not following these laws and you get booted out of their respective markets you can't cry censorship it's that easy.

[pessimizer]

You can definitely cry censorship. Having a government process of censorship doesn't mean you can insist it's not censorship. Plenty of government groups responsible for censoring have the word "censor" in the name.

[Spivak]

Yes but you cry censorship to the German government, not to Telegram.

[pessimizer]

The comment I was replying to was about a business crying censorship about being kicked out of a country for not following its laws. Not about the users of Telegram crying to Telegram.

[Longhanks]

Except Telegram does not do business in Germany. Even if Germany gets Telegram kicked off the German App Store, they have no way to block Telegram's web servers, which do not need to comply with Germany's jurisdiction.

If they don't go down the route of implementing a state-level firewall such as China is doing, they're fighting a losing battle. And frankly, if Telegram were inaccessible from Germany, the same people would simply use the next messaging app. There's nothing groundbreaking within Telegram that cannot be replicated.

IMHO, this is the government embarrassing themselves with the fact that they've lost the goodwill of a huge chunk of the population and trying to blame Telegram for it - as if the mindset and communication of those unsatisfied people would simply change/disappear if they were no longer able to access Telegram. Which furthermore shows that today's governments still do not understand the internet.

[mschuster91]

> Even if Germany gets Telegram kicked off the German App Store, they have no way to block Telegram's web servers, which do not need to comply with Germany's jurisdiction.

For what it's worth, the NRW Landesmedienanstalt is busy establishing a DNS-level censorship infrastructure against Pornhub, Youporn, MyDirtyHobby and others [1]. It won't take long until providers will be forced to also add Telegram's infrastructure to that list.

[1]: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/landesmedienanstalt-kann...

[BitwiseFool]

It doesn't seem like Telegram is actually doing business in Germany. I feel like simply having German citizens using your app doesn't mean that the nation state of Germany has the same authority over your business as if you were actually registered as a GmbH in their territory.

[mannerheim]

I believe the German government has a novel interpretation of their jurisdiction as covering any website with content in the German language (see the Project Gutenberg debacle).

[ajsnigrutin]

On one hand, they can believe in many things, including jurisdictions, on the other hand, what can they actually do, against a company that is registered in some other country and abiding the laws there?

[mannerheim]

Presumably they could arrest you if you're ever in Germany.

[mannerheim]

Does this apply to China as well?

[3np]

See Apple, Blizzard, Disney, Microsoft

[Normille]

...or the US?

[encryptluks2]

Sure you can, and it is censorship if a country is banning your platform for not censoring public discourse. That is exactly what is happening here. It would be like liberals in the US blocking Telegram nationwide for allowing anti-mandate discussion and then saying the reason has not nothing to do with censorship.

[mschuster91]

> It would be like liberals in the US blocking Telegram nationwide for allowing anti-mandate discussion and then saying the reason has not nothing to do with censorship.

People on the blocked Telegram channels have denied the Holocaust (including the channel operator himself) which is a crime in Germany, Austria and 16 other European countries [1] or called for the murder, disfigurement or other injuries to politicians [2].

"Anti-mandate discussions" are bad enough, but unlike what went on in Hildmann's channels this stuff isn't criminal so the comparison of yours is a bit wrong.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetze_gegen_Holocaustleugnun...

[2] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/hunderte-morda...

[zaarn]

This isn't about "anti-mandate" discussion, it's about blocking the channel of someone (Avocadolf) who's got an open arrest warrant for inciting hatred and denying the holocaust as well as death threats to politicians (actual threats, not just dancing around the issue). I believe death threats are illegal even in the US.

[piaste]

Death threats are illegal pretty much everywhere but not necessarily subject to censorship. The threat is the crime, not the content. If someone is already dead, I can safely print a whole hardcover book of death threats against them.

On the other hand, forcibly removing content for the sake of the content is censorship. It can be censorship that most people approve of - which they usually do when the content is sufficiently vile and irredeemable - but it's still censorship.

[zaarn]

Correct, the threat is the crime. And German Police was investigating channels that were consistently committing this exact crime on Telegram. Telegram was told these crimes were happening in specific channels and Telegram did nothing. They were now given the choice of no business in germany or removing the channels crime was being committed on.

And yes, content was censored on. But not only death threats were censored but also holocaust denial, eugenics and inciting hatred against ethnic groups (Jewish groups, specifically).