this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
2 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43739 readers
1234 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Take the following with a big spoon of salt, since I am not a lawyer. Those are the results of interest and some reading on that topic.
Insulting someone is illegal in Germany (§ 185 StGB). You can get financial penalties and in worst cases some jailtime. However, if you insult someone back immediately, those can cancel each other out and the judge can exempt both of you or one of you from punishment (§ 199 StGB). Furthermore, since it is considered a crime, you could, theoretically, detain the culprit in case they want to flee until you are able to get some identification on them, i.e., see their ID card, or until someone like the police arrives (§ 127 StPO). Also this is not okay if you already know the person or have easy means to determine their ID (e.g., your neighbour or someone working at a facility you visit). In all cases the proportionality of your actions are important. (Beating someone senseless just to detain them, because they called you an avocado in a mean way is certainly not okay. This might be slightly different however, if the person in question commited a violent crime and is still acting violently.)