I hope we didn't reach Chines levels by now, and that there is still hope.
But yes, we're working hard on that and "like" to reach their level soonish. Our variant of the Ministry of Truth gets shaped out a little more with every year. Since the so called "Netzwerkdurchsuchungsgesetz"¹ we've got really close I guess. But there's already more coming: "Chatkontrolle"²…
> […] but companies aren't stooping to Germany.
Well, we're the country that had had shooter games with green blood for years, because reasons (and companies obeyed). Also there are of course special versions of movies, extra for the German market, that are "reworked" here and there to pass the censors. Freedom of speech and freedom of art have strict limits, you know… Something something, because Nazis. (The above mentioned laws get actually partly justified "because Nazis"; but judge for yourself).
>> The Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, NetzDG; German: Gesetz zur Verbesserung der Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken), also known colloquially as the Facebook Act (Facebook-Gesetz), is a German law that was passed in the Bundestag that officially aims to combating fake news, hate speech and misinformation online.
>> The Act obligates social media platforms with over 2 million users to remove "clearly illegal" content within 24 hours and all illegal content within 7 days of it being posted, or face a maximum fine of 50 million Euros. The deleted content must be stored for at least 10 weeks afterwards, and platforms must submit transparency reports on dealing with illegal content every six months. It was passed by the Bundestag in June 2017 and took full effect in January 2018.
>> The law has been criticised both locally and internationally by politicians, human rights groups, journalists and academics for incentivising social media platforms to pre-emptively censor valid and lawful expression, and making them the arbiter of what constitutes free expression and curtailing freedom of speech in Germany.
Of course it's only against "fake news, hate speech and misinformation online". Exactly like the laws in China…
Just for fun: Compare with the German Wikipedia page. Maybe you notice something. ;-)
>> The EU wants to oblige providers to search all private chats, messages, and emails automatically for suspicious content – generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance by means of fully automated real-time messaging and chat control and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence.
>> Other consequences of the proposal are ineffective network blocking, screening of person cloud storage including private photos, mandatory age verification leading to the end of anonymous communication, censorship in Appstores and the paternalism and exclusion of minors in the digital world.
Yes, games were censored, but they stayed the same for the rest of the world. Its a simple value change to make the blood green, so it was easy to pull off. For companies vying to get into China, they have to change the whole product for nearly everyone to get accepted, or have massive amounts of that product censored, and made to be a lesser product as a result. For those companies, why would you risk not only being rejected but having your movie gutted when you can just rewrite the whole thing to work with what the Chinese want? Thankfully videogames are not nearly as concerned with getting china dollars as movie studios so we aren't getting that kind of widespread global censorship yet. But really, its only a matter of time unless something cracks.
But still there are "international" versions of content and some "special versions" for some countries—and not an ultimately "pre-censored" version that would "please everybody" (or better said, all boards of censors at once regardless country).
For US audience you need for example to censor nipples. In Germany we make jokes about that. But here a swastika is a very big problem, US people would not mind OTOH. Making a Mohamed joke will get you banned elsewhere; and so forth.
So I don't really see an acute danger of "pre-censoring".
The actual scandal is that the content industry just obeys all that madness. Of course, because they're only interested in the money. The actual messages are completely irrelevant and get changed fundamentally at a whim without remorse. That's the part that makes me think.
I hope we didn't reach Chines levels by now, and that there is still hope.
But yes, we're working hard on that and "like" to reach their level soonish. Our variant of the Ministry of Truth gets shaped out a little more with every year. Since the so called "Netzwerkdurchsuchungsgesetz"¹ we've got really close I guess. But there's already more coming: "Chatkontrolle"²…
> […] but companies aren't stooping to Germany.
Well, we're the country that had had shooter games with green blood for years, because reasons (and companies obeyed). Also there are of course special versions of movies, extra for the German market, that are "reworked" here and there to pass the censors. Freedom of speech and freedom of art have strict limits, you know… Something something, because Nazis. (The above mentioned laws get actually partly justified "because Nazis"; but judge for yourself).
___
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act
>> The Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, NetzDG; German: Gesetz zur Verbesserung der Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken), also known colloquially as the Facebook Act (Facebook-Gesetz), is a German law that was passed in the Bundestag that officially aims to combating fake news, hate speech and misinformation online.
>> The Act obligates social media platforms with over 2 million users to remove "clearly illegal" content within 24 hours and all illegal content within 7 days of it being posted, or face a maximum fine of 50 million Euros. The deleted content must be stored for at least 10 weeks afterwards, and platforms must submit transparency reports on dealing with illegal content every six months. It was passed by the Bundestag in June 2017 and took full effect in January 2018.
>> The law has been criticised both locally and internationally by politicians, human rights groups, journalists and academics for incentivising social media platforms to pre-emptively censor valid and lawful expression, and making them the arbiter of what constitutes free expression and curtailing freedom of speech in Germany.
Of course it's only against "fake news, hate speech and misinformation online". Exactly like the laws in China…
Just for fun: Compare with the German Wikipedia page. Maybe you notice something. ;-)
___
² https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...
>> The EU wants to oblige providers to search all private chats, messages, and emails automatically for suspicious content – generally and indiscriminately. The stated aim: To prosecute child pornography. The result: Mass surveillance by means of fully automated real-time messaging and chat control and the end of secrecy of digital correspondence.
>> Other consequences of the proposal are ineffective network blocking, screening of person cloud storage including private photos, mandatory age verification leading to the end of anonymous communication, censorship in Appstores and the paternalism and exclusion of minors in the digital world.