[ndlan]

Precisely part of the problem is that most instances are in Europe, which means that much of the speech you can find online is illegal, and if you aren't Facebook you don't have the muscle to fight a politician or a judge who wants to make an example out of you.

[aftoprokrustes]

I am genuinely curious: can you give examples of illegal content a EU based server would not be allowed to display/link to but a US based would?

[faiD9Eet]

In Germany you are not allowed to downplay, deny or condone the Holocaust. It is part of the criminal code.

§ 130 iii StGB

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__130.html

> Mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu fünf Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe wird bestraft, wer eine unter der Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus begangene Handlung [...] öffentlich oder in einer Versammlung billigt, leugnet oder verharmlost.

[mcv]

Extreme hate speech. In Germany, Nazi symbols and holocaust denial are illegal. I think Musk's new right-wing Twitter policies are going to run into that problem: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/10/twitter-f...

[rsynnott]

Nazi propaganda and holocaust denial would be the main ones; many European countries ban that. This is generally fairly narrowly defined, though.

[ndlan]

October, 2018: "In Europe, Speech Is an Alienable Right: [the European Court of Human Rights] upheld an Austrian woman’s conviction for disparaging the Prophet Muhammad."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr...

[aftoprokrustes]

Without the need to agree or disagree with the ruling itself (which I cannot read about, as the article is behind a paywall, and I expect that the ruling is more nuanced than what the clickbait title suggests), the fact that a person was condemned for saying something for some reason (provocation to hate I would assume) does not mean that a mastodon server would be liable for relaying the information. Actually, politicians get condemned on a regular basis for diffamation or hate speech, but I never heard of any TV channel or newspaper being sued for having reported on the discourse of said politicians.

I have to say that I expected a bit more, as you mentioned "most content on the internet".