Germany's new law on social media hate speech went into effect on Monday along with the new year. Apparently the new legislation already has its first high-profile political violator in less than 24 hours.
Germany has started enforcing a strict new law around hate speech on social media — and has already launched a criminal investigation into a far-right MP who called Muslims "barbarians."
The new law, known locally as NetzDG or the Network Enforcement Act, forces social media sites to delete offensive posts. It came into effect on January 1, and covers Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Google, and YouTube, but excludes LinkedIn and WhatsApp, according a report in Deutsche Welle.
Beatrix von Storch is the deputy leader of far-right party AfD and is under investigation by the police for recent inflammatory Facebook and Twitter posts describing Muslims as "barbarians." In a now-deleted tweet, she complained that Cologne police were tweeting season's greetings in Arabic and claimed this was trying to appease "gang-raping" Muslims.
According to reports, she was temporarily blocked from Twitter but has now been reinstated.
Von Storch reposted the same message on Facebook on December 31 as a kind of test to see whether it would be deleted. Her post remains live on Facebook as of Tuesday morning.
In addition to criminal investigations, the law allows for substantial fines for social media companies (up to a whopping 50 million euros!) if they don't investigate and delete hate speech in a very timely manner. Needless to say, free speech advocates are warning of massive overreaction by Facebook and Twitter.
Not everyone is happy about the change. Reporters Without Borders said in July that the "Facebook law" would have a negative impact on press freedom.
"The short deadline for removal, coupled with the threat of heavy fines, will very likely drive social networks to remove more content than is legally justified. Even journalistic publications will face a real danger of being affected by this kind over-blocking without due process," said the organisation's executive director for Germany, Christian Mihr, at the time.
Something like this would never pass constitutional muster in the US, which is yet another reminder that free speech advocates here stateside really don't know the difference between "The government is censoring me" and "The company whose social media platform I use can make its own terms of use." Germany's social media law is definitely an example of the former.
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