NUREMBERG, Germany — Police in Bavaria, Germany are seeking information on a pile of 1990s porn magazines found in a ditch on the side of a road, so that they can charge whoever disposed of the magazines with criminal “distribution of pornography.”
The official Twitter account of the Middle Franconia region, which includes Nuremberg, posted today about the finding. Featuring the hashtag #Hindweise, which means "Tips," the post requested that local people come forward and identify the person who had disposed of the decades-old adult print publications.
A German Twitter commenter replied, “Put those out in your break room and delete the tweet,” encouraging the Bavarian police to “take care of unenforced arrest warrants against Nazis” instead or “just take a vacation or a break.”
“But please don't embarrass yourself any further,” the commenter added.
Germany, like France and England, is currently undergoing a public debate about porn’s supposed status as an “online harm,” amid vocal calls by crusading groups to impose age verification schemes on tube sites and platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, which tolerate users posting explicit content.
In Germany, such efforts are single-handedly spearheaded by Tobias Schmid — an obscure, conservative local bureaucrat from the North Rhine-Westphalia region — and have recently resulted in the first national ban order on YouPorn, Pornhub and MyDirtyHobby.
