> Hosting things within the EU has become really tough.
I, as a European, using mostly dedicated servers within the EU (including Hetzner) haven't noticed this at all. What are you referring to specifically?
Some "use cases" like building marketing profiles and alike certainly has gotten harder, but that's a feature so I'm guessing you're not referring to that. I don't think general "hosting things" has become any harder than before, assuming you're not trying to slurp up as much data as possible.
Unfortunately the act is designed to block vague categories like "hate speech" and "misinformation" and has huge fines attached, so it's designed to ensure that very trigger-happy enforcement is the only workable strategy. It was written to whack Facebook and Google primarily but it's possible that the wording also captures Hetzner, or they're worried that it might.
If they do feel they fall under it then they'd probably have to automate takedowns in response to abuse reports. As otherwise they'd need 24/7 on-call content reviewers, which goes against their low cost nature. So if this is the cause it's really an issue with German law being unfriendly to smaller/cheaper content hosters.
At least when they try to comply with NetzDG they should also try to store the deleted data for 10 weeks as per the law. That clearly didn’t happen in OP’s case, so it was either Hetzner failing to retain as required or not a NetzDG situation at all.
Yes but what is a "platform"? And if you define a user as someone who connects to your servers, Hetzner certainly has more than 2M.
The questions here are rhetorical. It doesn't matter what we think the answers are. The penalties are so huge that if there's even a tiny chance of a judge disagreeing with you, then you have to take measures to avoid the risk.
It might be more related to German regulation than to EU regulation. Germany has some pretty strict laws related to speech, for example. My understanding is that Kiwix mirrored Wikipedia data on Hetzner's servers, and I'm almost 100% sure that Wikipedia contains things that are completely fine in the US, but technically illegal in Germany.
However this is more related to EU regulation rather than Hetzner itself.
Hosting things within the EU has become really tough.