Your freedom ends where my freedom begins. Hate speech only does harm other people, so why should we tolerate it? Sure it may be abused under circumstances, but afaik most people here are in favor of these laws. Just because you disagree doesn't make us less free. Oh and of course we're talking about obvious hate speech here, not suppressing political discussion.

By the way, we already had the "Stasi" in Germany and know exactly how real political censorship feels like. There is quite a difference between that and trying to protect peasants from being harassed to death.

The tone of your post indicates you have no idea what you are talking about. In Europe hate speech laws are a thing, essentially it is considered a form of libel and/or intimidation. It exists across most of Europe, and has existed for decades.

You may agree or disagree with that kind of (again, fairly common) legal framework, but this has nothing to do specifically with Germany or with 2017. The only news in this article is that until now typically they would act on social media only following complaint, whereas now they are acting as if it were traditional media (i.e. acting once it is published).

On the contrary, Germany is only doing what the Americans taught them was effective against Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification#Censorship