-Press release from Steinhöfel Lawyers-
Social network knowingly left criminal insults online for months
Dr. Alice Weidel is suing Facebook - for the first time a top German politician is taking direct action against the US company!
The complaints against Facebook don't stop. Next Friday, the press chamber of the Hamburg Regional Court will hear an application for an interim injunction from the AfD parliamentary group leader Dr. Alice Weidel against Facebook Ireland Ltd. In an article published on the Huffington Post Facebook page on September 10, 2017, user Sanda G. posted the following comment:
“yes and Ms. Weidel packed up her pussy and ran away so much on the topic that she is a politician, this Nazi bastard, being a lesbian, licking her pussy in the evening and being with the AFD against lesbians in the morning hahahah that's fine hahahahhaha”.
This comment violates Section 185 of the Criminal Code as a criminal insult.
Facebook has known about the comment since mid-September 2017, but left it online.
A user reported it anonymously to Facebook on September 10, 2017 and was met with a formulaic text message three days later:
“We have reviewed the comment and determined that it does not violate any of our Community Standards.”
Four and a half months later, on January 27, 2018, and after the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) had come into full force, the same user reported the comment again and received the same response from Facebook on the same day, according to which the criminal insult did not violate the “community standards” after being examined again. violate.
“According to German law, service providers such as Facebook are liable for the content of their users if they become aware of the legal violation and do not delete it immediately. Since September 13, 2017, the network was responsible for the crime, just like the perpetrator himself,” says Joachim Steinhöfel, the lawyer representing Weidel.
“Facebook repeatedly deletes illegally legal content from its users. On the other hand, even clearly criminal content remains online - for at least six months. A complete failure of the company’s controls.”
Dr. Weidel himself found out about this matter for the first time on January 29, 2018. Facebook was warned the same day and asked to delete the comment. The company responded as follows in a letter to Steinhöfel Lawyers on February 1, 2018:
“…thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. The content you reported can no longer be accessed in Germany. This, in our opinion, resolved this issue. If you have any further questions, visit our help section.”
According to lawyers Steinhöfel, the thanks for having been made aware of the “matter” turns out to be insincere, since Facebook was previously informed of the crime at least twice and possibly also by other users. The statement is also untrue because the disputed comment continued to be readily accessible in Germany at least until the last check on March 28, 2018.
Access to the comment in Germany only requires the legal and widespread use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN for short).
“The fact that Facebook did not immediately and voluntarily block this clearly criminal content worldwide, not even in German-speaking countries, shows an outrageous indifference to our client’s personal rights,” says Steinhöfel.
“It's hard to imagine that this time it's just pure incompetence. Anyone who acts like this does so with full intention - they want this insult to stay online.”
The press chamber of the Hamburg Regional Court has scheduled the public oral hearing on the application for an interim injunction for April 27, 2018, 12:15 p.m., meeting room B 335, Sievekingplatz 1, 20355 Hamburg. Facebook has not yet complied with the chamber's request to comment by March 6, 2018.
About Steinhöfel Lawyers
The Hamburg lawyer Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel is one of the most prominent and well-known German competition and media lawyers. Other core areas of his law firm, founded in 1989, are legal issues relating to the Internet and e-commerce. Steinhöfel can draw on experience from almost 10,000 civil cases, which were often conducted over several instances - to date he has brought well over 200 cases to the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). Steinhöfel, who also works as a journalist and blogger, has been vehemently campaigning for freedom of expression, especially in social networks, for years and is considered a vehement critic of the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG). Since 2016, he has documented numerous cases of wrongly blocked users or deleted posts, as well as the failure to delete criminal comments, on the “Facebook Block – Wall Of Shame” page he created. The site received international coverage. The Scientific Service of the Bundestag has mentioned the collected cases in a report (WD 10 - 3000 - 037/17) as evidence of the difficult assessment of the controversial content of hate comments based on Facebook's often non-transparent deletion and non-deletion practices. More at www.steinhoefel.de and at https://facebook-sperre.steinhoefel.de/
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