Free Speech Around the World is Curtailed in the Name of "Protecting Us"
The Americans have the First Amendment and the Germans have free speech in their Constitution, albeit based on this new program there is now this concept of "hate speech" (however arbitrarily defined) and that goes against free speech. So in effect Germany has "free speech" in the sense that you can say whatever you want and then be arrested in your own home, alleging that something you said "offended" someone or "incited" somebody. It's one of those "adopt this policy or Hitler wins" flippant reactions. It won't prevent or police certain offline behaviour. It sort of 'offloads' that offline.
Two years ago I pointed out that "Free Speech [is] Rejected by Opponents of Free Software" (who moreover engage in online harassment [1, 2] under the guise of "social justice" or "haha, this is funny!!").
Seeing what happens in Germany and its European neighbours, not to mention Canada and the US (the current administration defines "free speech" as "speech we like") as well as several increasingly dictatorial Asian nations, it seems clear that - perhaps egged on by venomous online discourse - we're practically losing critical provisions meant to foster dissent in society. The world is, in this particular sense (at the very least), getting worse. The reason dissent has always been important and will continue to be crucial is that ‘All Progress Depends on the Unreasonable Man’, or to use the exact quote: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Governing bodies - ever so eager to protect their power (i.e. the status quo) - try to control everything that anyone can say and enforcement is typically done via private companies such as Facebook or proxies of convenience. Right of appeal? Not a chance. It's "too expensive" to manually assess reports (assigning an actual human), it would harm corporate profits.
Adapt or die.
We have spent many years speaking about how to combat this trend. There are purely technical means, not just legal means. █