Russian bill is copy-and-paste of Germany’s hate speech law
Found on Reporters Without Borders on Friday, 21 July 2017
“Our worst fears have been realized,” said Christian Mihr, RSF Germany’s executive director. “The German law on online hate speech is now serving as a model for non-democratic states to limit Internet debate.”
A UK parliamentary report in April cited the German example when it recommended making social networks pay large fines for failing to remove hate speech quickly enough.
Now, an Advocatus Diaboli could argue that governments want to limit freedom of speech to that speech that is in favor of them; and they are very well aware that social networks will delete way more than they would need to, just to avoid the fines.