They leave for Germany, of all places. Germany is one of the European states with most arrests for posting entries on social media. I guess they will pack their stuff and move on in 1-2 years from now.
Germany has a big alt-rising in the form of AFD, and consequently, they do track social media heavily. There is also a non-insignificant fundamentalist Muslim population.
For things like troll posts or just general hate speech, most of the time the police visit your house and ask you questions and give you a stern warning. And remember, police in EU isn't like police in US - when you get visited by police in EU, you aren't afraid that you are going to get shot up or thrown on the ground and tazed if you did nothing wrong.
In extreme cases where you are calling for things like beheading, yea they def arrest for that.
Source: close friend that lives in Germanty works for a company that does business with German government. I don't know first hand but he is pretty aware of the policics in EU and I have no reason to believe he would be exaggerating.
On anther note, Germany policing is quite progressive actually. For example, if you run, you don't get a charge for evading/eluding - its actually legal to run from police because "desire for freedom is a human right".
In France, discriminatory identity checks are a striking illustration of this. Police disproportionately target certain citizens on the basis of their skin color or presumed origin, particularly young people perceived to be Black or Arab, including children. These abusive controls can often lead to more serious police violence, including with fatal outcomes.
> "big alt-rising in the form of AFD, and consequently, they do track social media heavily. There is also a non-insignificant fundamentalist Muslim population"
They are not though alt-right movements all work on shifting the blame. They always find a scapegoat (jewish people in WW2) for material conditions instead of attacking the root causes.
It seems reasonable to be concerned about a government that wants the power to reveal Internet users, but I couldn’t say on what basis Proton expects legal protection to continue after the move.
Neither of your links mention arrests, one specifically says "None of the suspects were detained". They don't seem to back up the original claim about Germany arresting the most people based on social media posts.
That’s an important distinction. Thank you for referring back to the original wording. They were investigated for violating the criminal code, searched, interrogated, and had devices seized in a number of cases, but seemingly not arrested.
as a german i can confirm that this happens very frequently (way more often than you think). usually it's politicians who file police reports which get prosecuted most of the time. i believe the last government (left wing coalition) built up massive infrastructure to prosecute such offenses. politicians in germany get special protection in terms of speech laws. §188 StGB allows the state to prosecute you severely, even without a private complaint from the politician in some cases.
