Jonah Aragon ⮕ DEF CON
@jonah@mastodon.neat.computer
Sometimes people read things I write or watch things I say • I work at @privacyguides and @triplebit (ASN 401332) • Instance admin @ https://mstdn.party, https://mstdn.plus, and https://neat.computer [ Minneapolis 🏙️ ][ Minnesota 
][ USA 🇺🇸 ]
mastodon.neat.computer
Replying to
@voxel@infosec.space
@voxel@infosec.space thanks for sharing your thoughts! I disagree with many of these takeaways.
There is one I (somewhat) agree with, regarding Section 86a and the political insult law: I think the source article made a small error, or at least if they were correct I cannot find a source for this. The error is that the statistic that was doubled being cited here refers to investigations of §86 and §86a combined, not §86a alone; so I can't definitively say "under 86a" specifically, rather it should be "under 86 and 86a"
BKS published statistics in this 2025 document, and in table 2 of the document it notes section 86 and 86a propaganda offenses at 30,379 in 2025.
Compare to this 2015 document which states that 35.1% of the political offenses listed are 86/86a propaganda offenses, which would be roughly 13,700.
13,700 -> 30,379 is comfortably double the number.
The ordinary political insult figure comes from PKS 2025 which notes 4,792 cases. (in Excel format, annoyingly)
It is also worth noting that these are police-recorded "offenses," which are probably higher than the number of "investigations" depending on how you define an investigation. I would imagine that the number of investigative proceedings is correlated and so the statement is still at least approximately true, but I would say it would be more accurate to have said "police-recorded propaganda offenses."
Anyways, the number of "Nazi symbol ban" specific offenses may or may not have doubled, but the number of political propaganda offenses certainly did double, which was really the crux of the story.
Your other notes are largely semantics or stretches which I do not believe affect the facts or meaning of the story we shared in that episode. In particular, your "fact check" regarding the UN does not negate what we or the article stated. The fact that Irene Khan's findings/report are not the official position of the UN does not change the fact that the investigation itself was performed under the UN's mandate by a UN appointed expert, constituting a UN investigation.
