The thing about Europe: it's the actual land of the free now

The Online Safety Act in the UK has been discussed here before and it is part of a general trend to prevent "harmful" speech including specifically "legal but harmful speech".

Bendels was sentenced to a 7 months suspended sentence and a fine of 1500 Euros, has to remove the image and apologize to Faeser. Bendels will appeal the decision.

I'm going to guess that this will be overturned on appeal. Every country has stupid courts that make bad decisions. I think this is kind of an edge case between satire and defamation, since Bendels is ostensibly a real journalist who reports on real facts—it seems odd to me that he would publish doctored pictures. Still, I think this will lean towards satire in the end, since I don't think most reasonable people would assume the picture of Faeser was real.

You can read about it here (German):

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/nancy-faeser-erwirkt-...

Also, AFAIK while calling him an idiot might not be the direct reason for the raid, it is a crome in itself, right?

I'm not sure why that matters in the context of this discussion. He is free to file as many criminal complaints as he wants, no? Living in a free society means that idiots can do idiotic things like filing 700 criminal complaints.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-charges-... (scroll down to explanation).

its not the only European country where this is possible, at least in theory: https://www.politico.eu/article/european-countries-where-ins...

I disagree that this is a problem per se. Pretty much all jurisdictions across the world have laws like that. It really depends on how exactly the law is implemented.

In fact, American libel and defamation laws are, in some ways, more problematic than many European ones simply because of how the legal system works. If you are sued in a place with no SLAPP laws, the mere lawsuit can be so expensive that it can have a chilling effect on free speech, even if the defendant ultimately wins the case.

(I do agree that laws singling out politicians are stupid.)

It's really quite interesting to read at some point, but I believe that nobody should have to "clarify it was doctored". Because that image was also very obviously fake - it's literally a meme template, and nobody should be prosecuted for that. I do have to question your judgement if you believe that is real.

They believe those things because they don’t see it obviously fake.

Obviously is highly subjective.

There is a reason why satire accounts have to clearly state they are satire and why things like /s exist.

The judge came to the conclusion it wasn’t obvious.

I'm not speaking from a legal standpoint, I'm speaking from a common sense moral one. We cannot cater to the most mentally challenged in society to make sure they cannot harm themselves.

Satire is entirely ruined once you put a /s behind it. Let me quote the Onion here -

The court’s decision suggests that parodists are in the clear only if they pop the bal- loon in advance by warning their audience that their parody is not true. But some forms of comedy don’t work unless the comedian is able to tell the joke with a straight face. Parody is the quintessential example. Parodists intentionally inhabit the rhetorical form of their target in order to exaggerate or implode it—and by doing so demonstrate the target’s illogic or absurd- ity. Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original.