I'm curious, do you have a source for your claims?
> German and UK citizens got canceled, fined or SWATTED for calling their elected rules stupid/corrupt on social media
Being "canceled" isn't a defined term. Being SWATted has nothing to do with state censorship, it's people abusing emergency services.
Getting a fine by the government for calling "elected rules stupid/corrupt on social media" would be the only thing you mentioned that would count as state censorship. Do you have a link to a case where this happened?
> in Germany you get a fine for downloading a song/movie
You don't get a fine for legally downloading movies.
There's an industry of lawyers profiting off of IP and copyright laws, yes.
Not being able to pirate movies isn't state censorship.
Those who make bold claims, need to back them up with evidence.
From following your other comments, you seem to be confused by Germany's version of what in the USA is known as Defamation lawsuits, and you're mixing it up with what is commonly known as "free speech", or the restriction of it.
If you want to argue in good faith, you should share some facts instead of sending people to Google. I am closely watching German politics and still have no idea what are you talking about. Maybe my search query is wrong, maybe you are just making this up.
You can express your opinion about everything and everybody, including politicians, in public as much as you want in germany. But first paragraph in the german constitution is about human dignity ("Menschenwürde"), not freedom of speech. Which means, that when you insult somebody in public, it can happen that the affected person might sue you, and that a court might judge that you hurt the person's dignity. The consequence might be, that you have to pay a fee.
Recently there were cases of police operations at the homes of people who where accused of insulting a politician. Those operations where heavily criticized in the german public and followed by a court rouling, that judged that the police overreacted in those cases.
Somehow, in certain circles, this whole story gets shortened to "If you criticize the government in germany, your home gets raided by the police".
Please tell me how you think this "protect one's honor" law doesn't get abused.
Also, an youtuber from my country made a video during the pandemic exposing the mistreatment of seasonal fruit picking workers from my country working in Germany, and the video got blocked in Germany by Youtube, most likely on request by flagging.
So do do you expect to learn about censorship of German media if you follow German media which is subject to censorship? Do you realize the irony of it all? Did you ever expect for German media to go out and say "here's how we're censoring you"? Germans are living in Plato's cave allegory and are irate when people call them out for it.
> So do do you expect to learn about censorship of German media if you follow German media which is subject to censorship?
I‘m used to work with various sources of information professionally and don’t get breaking news from Reddit. Free media do not exist. They all have certain alignments or views, they are all censored by governments etc. Russia just pushes news agenda from the top, America works in more subtle ways, through denial of access (I‘m complicit here), in Germany that’s mostly lawyers, publishers with agenda and (surprise!) privacy laws. Nevertheless it is still possible to stay updated and extract a lot of information even from censored media, sometimes reading between the lines. Overall I think German media do enjoy a lot of freedom.
I still do not understand how is this related to privacy. Yes, in democracy all things are important and connected. But the original claim was that somehow we have a problem with it. What is the problem?
If you think you truly are up against an echo chamber then it’s in your best interest not to make a big show of martyrdom, claiming to be persecuted by it. Most posts that mention being downvoted become targets for further downvoting. Don’t break the fourth wall.
It’s not about what’s right or wrong, it’s just trying to appeal to a place’s sense of shame when you’ve failed to secure any local support just makes you look bad, and like you’re grandstanding.
I'm not trying to secure support, I don't give a shit about that since I'm not running for president, I'm trying to speak my mind. If people don't want to hear it it's their loss, not mine.
The only reason I was pointing it out the downvotes is that I'm baffled about the amount of ignorance and groupthink on a website of people who see themselves as free and critical thinkers, yet display the same pre-programmed NPC behavior as bots. If a comment doesn't match their world view, they downvote without giving a second thought to look deeper into the claim.
> German and UK citizens got canceled, fined or SWATTED for calling their elected rules stupid/corrupt on social media
Being "canceled" isn't a defined term. Being SWATted has nothing to do with state censorship, it's people abusing emergency services.
Getting a fine by the government for calling "elected rules stupid/corrupt on social media" would be the only thing you mentioned that would count as state censorship. Do you have a link to a case where this happened?
> in Germany you get a fine for downloading a song/movie
You don't get a fine for legally downloading movies.
There's an industry of lawyers profiting off of IP and copyright laws, yes.
Not being able to pirate movies isn't state censorship.