IN MY OPINIONKlaus Doring
Do you have a Face-book ac-count? You might reply, “What a crazy question! Of course, I do have!” How do you deal with hatred comments? Do you know how to deal with it? Delete – block – report etc. etc. Did you try it?
A German Munich court to try Facebook’s Zuckerberg for inciting hatred. Mark Zuckerberg and several other senior Facebook staff are facing charges of abetting crimes like Holocaust denial. German authorities believe the social media giant is not doing enough to censor the offensive posts.
The Munich court has opened a lawsuit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, German media reported last Friday. News outlet “Der Spiegel” wrote on its website, before the main weekly magazine’s Saturday release, that it had obtained court documents charging the social media mogul with incitement to hatred. Zuckerberg is reportedly being charged alongside Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, chief Europe lobbyist Richard Allan, and his Berlin counterpart Eva-Maria Kirschsieper.
According to the “Spiegel”, the complaint comes from the Würzburg-based attorney Chanjo Jun. In the suit, he accuses Facebook of tolerating appeals for murder, threats of violence, and Holocaust denial, among other things.
Laws regulating hate speech in Germany are extremely tight, with most Nazi symbolism and racist propaganda strictly forbidden, a legacy of Germany’s role in World War II. Although Facebook is obliged to remove illegal content from its site, it has repeatedly garnered hefty criticism for the time it takes to do so.
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas has made hate speech on social media something of a pet project, threatening Twitter and Facebook specifically with being “too slow” in removing offending posts. Maas has pushed a new initiative in Brussels to create EU-wide laws that would hand out stricter penalties for racist or xenophobic content. Spreading racist ideology can come at a hefty price in Germany. Last month, a man in Würzburg became the latest to see jail time over an online post advocating racial hatred. The posts in question advocated violence against Jews, foreigners, and refugees. Although the defendant expressed remorse, he was handed a prison sentence of two years and three months.
We all know: Face-book has often said it stands unequivocally against hate speech, and would work in the future to ensure a swifter removal of related posts. But what did really happened?
Last December 2015, Facebook, Twitter and Google pledged to remove offensive posts in Germany within 24 hours. Users say their requests to take down hate speech often go unheeded. “In Europe we’re currently discussing the audiovisual directive,” Maas said in a veiled warning. It would regulate media providers’ material, including social media outlets that were currently “privileged” in not paying for such content, he said. In Europe! How about in Asia – in the Philippines?
I strongly also agree with the German Justice Minister who stated, “The Internet is an asset”, but we have a right this first, to ensure that hate mail is deleted and, second, that the perpetrators are detected.”
Two weeks ago, Volker Kauder, the leader of Merkel’s parliamentary faction warned that he had “run out of patience.”
He suggested a fine of 50,000 Euro (US$ 55,000) if Internet companies failed to take down hate posts within a week. The Brussel’s draft audiovisual directive already includes a passage entitled “prohibition of hate speech” that refers to a 2008 EU “framework decision” to tackle racism and xenophobia via criminal law proceedings.
Its first two articles urge the bloc’s 28 member nations to punish persons who publicly incite or aid and abet violence and hatred with prison terms of up to three years. Liable legal entities can be fined or lose subsidies.
