>Australian defamation law is insanely bad. And a lot of Australians are very lawsuit happy because of it. Same in Germany and Austria. You need to be very ca

>Australian defamation law is insanely bad. And a lot of Australians are very lawsuit happy because of it. Same in Germany and Austria. You need to be very careful what you say online about people, especially politicians, and what reviews you leave online to various businesses, or you can end up with a defamation lawsuit letter in your mailbox, even if what you wrote was the truth. Lots of lawsuit happy people here. A small bikeshop I took my bike for a service completely messed up my shifter and would refuse to acknowledge it, so I left them a 1 star review on Google maps and took my bike somewhere else, and a month later I got a letter from their lawyer telling me that unless I can prove in court they fucked up my shifter, I have to take down my 1 star review or else they'll sue me for damages due to lost business as all their other reviews are all 5 stars. Lol, make sense how they got only 5 star reviews. There's also a website here to find doctors, rate them and leave them reviews, but when you try to leave one a review, you get a huge warning pop-up explaining you what you're not allowed to write in the review, and than includes "mentioning a misdiagnosis". I was speechless. Like what's the point then? This goes on and on, for almost all review based website, including jobs. Since the owner of the business can have the negative reviews or comments he doesn't like removed under defamation laws, making most review worthless in the end. So.e local gren party politician in Austria got called a "lousy traitor" and "corrupt bumpkin" on her Facebook page and that politician took Facebook to court to have all such comments about her removed under the defamation law arguing that insults aren't free speech, and won, with Facebook having to remove the comments worldwide, not just on the Austrian Facebook page, leaving the question of how a country can just censor parts of the global internet, as that would set a precedent for other countries to do the same.[1] This is what I appreciate a lot about the US (and other countries), you can say and write whatever you want about anyone. Want to call your local politician a corrupt dickhead and teel him to go f*ck himself? Go ahead! Want to leave a 1 star review because the service swindled you? It's your 1st amendment! This is in no way possible here. I get the need for privacy and defamation laws, but when those laws are a powerful backdoor for bad actors to use them for censorship and intimidation, for their own benefit, then maybe those laws should be defanged a bit to preserve free speech. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/opinion/facebook-censorship-speech-law.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/opinion/facebook-censorsh...