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.
