Germany urges Facebook to delete racist posts

Germany's federal justice minister has called in Facebook executives to explain why the social network refuses to delete anti-refugee tirades posted by users.

In a letter to the company, Mr Heiko Maas said his ministry had received many complaints from citizens concerned about remarks on Facebook related to a wave of xenophobic attacks on refugees and asylum homes in Germany.

“In particular, Facebook users complain that your company has not taken effective action despite concrete indications of xenophobic and racist posts,” wrote Mr Maas, suggesting the company did not appear to be applying effectively its own community standards.

He wrote that users often received replies saying the post in question did not contravene the site’s community standards guidelines.

Mr Maas said his concerns were not calling into question freedom of expression, but “that there can be no misguided tolerance towards internet users who propagate xenophobia and racism”.

Xenophobic

Facebook has denied its network has fanned any xenophobic flames in Germany’s refugee debate and that it “works hard every day to protect people on Facebook against abuse, hate speech and bullying”.

But the rise of the anti-immigrant Pegida group late last year, organised exclusively via Facebook, has increased scrutiny of the US social network as an organising tool for extremists.

Germany’s Spiegel TV this week confronted Facebook users with their xenophobic remarks.

One man was asked, in front of his boss, why he had posted the remark: “There’s still room in Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen.”

Another was drinking a beer with friends when he was confronted with his post about asylum homes: “In the middle ages such houses were burned down. I learned that in history.”

Puritan

A German satirical website devoted an entire story to what it viewed as Facebook’s puritan moderation policies.

“Of course we don’t find it nice when someone demands that all refugees belong in the gas (chambers),” said a (fictitious) Facebook spokeswoman, “but our hands are tied so long as (the post) is not garnished with at least a square millimetre of female nipple.”

German internet activist Anke Domscheit-Berg accused Facebook of ignoring its own community standards, which include a ban on racist remarks, and suggested it was up to users to contact Facebook’s advertisers.

She told Berlin’s Inforadio: “If people say to them, ‘I find it unacceptable that this xenophobic entry is beside an advert for your company’, perhaps they will contact Facebook and more will happen.”