A young man in his boxer shorts answered the door when the police arrived at his house. His father was at work.
They told him that his father was accused of violating the law. An inflammatory statement about immigration was attributed to a German politician. "Just because someone rapes, robs or is a serious criminal doesn't mean they should be deported," the fake remark said.
The police searched the home for about 30 minutes and seized a computer and a device.
A similar scene was playing out at about 100 other homes across Germany at the exact moment in March. The perpetrators of the fake statement had their devices seized and they were fined.
The head of the Federal Criminal Police Office said after the March raids that anyone who posts hate messages should expect the police to be at the door.
The internet has been used to spread hate speech, misinformation and misogynistic content. The people behind the most toxic online behavior don't have to worry about repercussions in the real world. The United States and most other Western democracies have avoided policing the internet because of free speech rights. Most social media sites remove a post or suspend their account for it.
Germany has prosecuted people for online hate speech.
The German authorities have brought charges for threatening and harassing people. People were brought in for questioning after the police raided homes. In some cases judges have sent offenders to jail for violating fines. They believe that the threat of prosecution will push some of the worst behavior back into the shadows.
They have changed what it means to protect free speech to Americans. According to the authorities in Germany, they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused.
A state prosecutor who attended the raid of the father's house said there had to be a line that could not be crossed. There needs to be repercussions.
In Germany, the stain of Nazism is driving a belief that free speech isn't absolute.
Is it too far to ask?
Walter Lbcke was a well-liked politician in Germany. He was known for his advocacy of wind turbines and bigger airports than for anything else. He became a target of online abuse after a video of him was uploaded to the internet. He said in the video that anyone who didn't want to take in refugees could leave Germany.
He was shot and killed by a neo-Nazi on the terrace of his house, shocking the public to the depths of far-right extremism in the country.
swastikas and other Nazi symbols are not allowed in Germany. With jail time, inciting hatred is a crime. It is against the law to insult someone.
In the internet age, the volume of toxicity is seemingly endless and often masked by anonymity.
The Germans tried to put more pressure on internet companies. The Network Enforcement Act forced Facebook and others to take down hate speech in a day or two.
The law did not go far enough due to the fact that it targeted companies rather than individuals who were posting vile content. The spread of hate speech and online abuse continued after the law passed.
The assassination of Mr. Lbcke led to intensified efforts to prosecute people who broke the law online. The government made it easier to arrest people who target public figures on the internet.
The internet enforcement laws were drafted by a former Justice Ministry official. After authorities began issuing fines and warnings, people stopped using illegal music and movie downloads.
If you show that prosecution is possible, it will have a big effect.
There are red evidence files in the hallways and bookshelves of the special task force. The files are full of words and images that no one sharing them probably ever imagined would be collected by government prosecutors.
Ms. Meininghaus, who works in the unit, said that the person she was looking at was only 17 years old.
There is no national figure on the number of people charged with online speech crimes. More than 8,500 cases were found in a review of German state records. More than a thousand people have been charged or punished since the beginning of the year.
Local teams like the one in Gttingen are responsible for covering cases in Lower Saxony, a large state in northern Germany. One of the most aggressive groups of lawyers and investigators in the country was created in 2020. The unit investigated 566 internet speech-related crimes last year and expects to more than double in the next four years. Almost 30% of the investigations resulted in a fine. The man who made the death threats on Telegram was committed to a mental health facility.
The team is stretched thin, constantly gathering evidence for prosecutions, drafting search and arrest warrants, and preparing for court. Sometimes a local television crew accompanies authorities when they raid homes.
Frank- Michael Laue started the unit after two decades as a criminal prosecutor. He bragged about fining a well-known painter the equivalent of about $10,000 for making fun of Turkish immigrants.
Mr. Laue said that if people refuse to give access to their phones, the device can be sent to a federal government lab. It is the same type of software used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.
Social media feeds, public records and government data are used by investigators. Swen Weiland is a software developer turned internet hate speech investigator. Clues about where a person lives and works are what he searches for. The person who compared Covid restrictions to the Holocaust used an online registry of licensed architects to identify the culprit.
He tries to find out what they do in their normal lives. The real person can be found if I find where they live. The internet doesn't always remember.
Detective work is needed because social media companies rarely turn over user information unless there is an imminent threat of violence, according to police officers and prosecutors. A rule that could have led to thousands of new cases per year was stopped by a court challenge.
The proposed law to give authorities user data without a legal order would undermine fundamental rights, according to a statement from the search engine giant. The company worked closely with law enforcement in Germany. Meta didn't want to say anything.
Margarete Bause, a former Green Party member of the German parliament, had followed the misleading Facebook post about immigration. When people referred to it when they called her office, she knew it had gone viral again.
She was a champion for human rights and humanitarian aid. Her support for immigration had been twisted by the fake comments.
The 51-year-old father's house in northwest Germany was raided due to that post. The father, whose name was not shared by authorities because of Germany's strict privacy laws, is still being investigated as police look at his devices. He still faces punishment even if he didn't know the comment was fake.
The father will have to pay a fine of about 1,400 euros. She said that they can't just accuse and hurt people with impunity.
The majority of perpetrators are not punished. Authorities only prosecute a fraction of posts considered illegal speech because the person behind it can't be quickly identified.
In the past, Hassmelden received more than 4,000 submissions per day. The group was unable to keep up with the load.
Josephine Ballon is the legal director at HateAid, a nonprofit in Berlin that helps victims of online abuse. There are a lot of abandoned cases.
Since writing a post about the difficulties of being a woman of color in Germany, a political activist in Gttingen has been the target of abuse and violent threats. Ms. Yousaf was afraid that her sister would be attacked because her home address was online. A person using the address of a shop her parents owned said they should be careful.
The lawyer helped her file a criminal complaint, but the police gave her a brochure about online hate, even though they couldn't identify the culprits. Some threatening posts were taken down, but most were still online. Information about the administrators of the group page was not turned over.
The victims said that abuse brings psychological trauma.
"What really got me was this really sexual aggression, all kinds of things that very explicitly said should happen to me, with pictures." It took years of therapy for her to overcome her fear. She couldn't sleep.
Sometimes victims decide to do their own investigations.
Christian Endt, a journalist in Berlin whose coverage of Covid drew a steady stream of insults online, broke down last year. He embarked on a quest to get the person who called him stupid and mentally ill prosecuted.
There was a photo on the profile page of the person who didn't have a real name. Mr. Endt was able to do an image search on the internet to find where the image could be found. He found a small-business owner on the professional networking site.
Mr. Endt sent his findings to the district attorney. The case was brought to the online hate unit in Lower Saxony. The man was fined about 1,000 after they reviewed the evidence.
Mr. Endt was unsure if what the man wrote was a crime or not. The person got a signal that there are limits to free speech after they did something about it.
Andy Grote, a city senator responsible for public safety and the police in Hamburg, broke the local social distancing rules by hosting an election party in a downtown bar.
After Mr. Grote admonished others for hosting parties during the Pandemic, a user wrote, "You are such a penis"
The house of the man who posted the insult was searched by six police officers. An uproar occurred after the incident.
The police were forced to clean up the graffiti after activists plastered them around the city. The police were forced to paint a mural with the phrase over and over again.
The case became known as Pimmelgate. Local prosecutors and the police were given too much discretion about enforcement of the law.
Alexander Mai, a climate activist, got into a Facebook argument with a far-right politician after the incident. A link to a picture of the mural was posted by Mr. Mai.
Police officers went to Mr. Mai's door at 6 a.m. to take his electronics. Mr. Jurca claimed that the link to the photo was offensive.
The police searched through his drawers and belongings for over an hour before they left. The raid was politically motivated because of Mr. Mai's climate activism. He is accused of making a public insult.
Mr. Mai said that they were not here because he was suspected of killing someone. I was suspected of making fun of someone on the internet.
There are several internet speech-related cases in Germany. The outcomes could lead to a new area of case law about what can and cannot be said online, potentially diminishing the role of internet companies as the main arbiters of online speech.
In countries like Britain and France, policymakers want to regulate internet speech more tightly, but have differing opinions about how to balance free expression with it.
In June of this year, a 49-year-old man was on trial in central Germany for comments he made on Facebook that said Mr. Lbcke was to blame for the politician's murder.
The judge was told by Dirk B. that the comments were taken out of context. He said that his Facebook post had been about Mr. Lbcke and that he had expressed his sympathies for the Lbcke family.
The freedom of expression in our state is what it is. He said that he would do it again.
The judge didn't agree. She said at the end of the hearing that he had supported Mr. Lbcke's murder. He was fined 2,400.
Paula reported from Germany.
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