Germany has formally announced its draconian push towards censorship of
social media. On March 14, Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas
announced the plan to formalize into law the “code of conduct”, which
Germany pressed upon Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in late 2015, and
which included a pledge to delete “hate speech” from their websites
within 24 hours.
“This [draft law] sets out binding standards for the way operators of
social networks deal with complaints and obliges them to delete criminal
content,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said in a statement announcing the
planned legislation.
“Criminal” content? Statements that are deemed illegal under German law
are now being conflated with statements that are merely deemed,
subjectively and on the basis of entirely random complaints from social
media users — who are free to abuse the code of conduct to their heart’s
content — to be “hate speech”. “Hate speech” has included critiques of
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migration policies. To be in disagreement
with the government’s policies is now potentially “criminal”. Social
media companies, such as Facebook, are supposed to be the German
government’s informers and enforcers — qualified by whom and in what
way? — working at the speed of light to comply with the 24-hour rule.
Rule of law, clearly, as in North Korea, Iran, Russia or any
banana-republic, has no place in this system.
Maas is not pleased with the efforts of the social media companies. They
do not, supposedly, delete enough reported content, nor do they delete
it fast enough, according to a survey by the Justice Ministry’s youth
protection agency. It found that YouTube was able to remove around 90%
of “illegal” postings within a week, while Facebook deleted or blocked
39% of content and Twitter only 1%. The German minister, it seems, wants
more efficiency.
“We need to increase the pressure on social networks… There is just as
little room for criminal propaganda and slander [on social media] as on
the streets,” said Maas. “For this we need legal regulations.” He has
now presented these legal regulations in the form of a draft bill, which
provides for complaints, reporting and fines.
There also appears to be no differentiation made between primary-source
hate speech, as in many religious tenets, and secondary-source hate
speech, reporting on the former.
According to the draft, social media platforms with more than two
million users would be obliged to delete or block any criminal offenses,
such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of
receipt of a user complaint. The networks receive seven days for more
complicated cases. Germany could fine a social media company up to 50
million euros for failing to comply with the law; it could fine a
company’s chief representative in Germany up to 5 million euros.
It does not stop there. Germany does not want these measures to be
limited to its own jurisdiction. It wants to share them with the rest of
Europe: “In the end, we also need European solutions for European-wide
companies,” said Maas. The European Union already has a similar code of
conduct in place, so that should not be very hard to accomplish.
Facebook, for its part, has announced that by the end of 2017, the
number of employees in complaints-management in Berlin will be increased
to more than 700. A spokeswoman said that Facebook had clear rules
against hate speech and works “hard” on removing “criminal content”.
If Facebook insists on operating under rules of censorship, it should at
the very least aim to administer those rules in a fair manner. Facebook,
however, does not even pretend that it administers its censorship in any
way that approximates fairness. Instead, Facebook’s practice of its
so-called “Community Standards” — the standards to which Facebook refers
when deleting or allowing content on its platform in response to user
complaints — shows evidence of entrenched bias. Posts critical of
Merkel’s migrant policies, for example, can get categorized as “Islamophobia”,
and are often found to violate “Community Standards”, while incitement
to actual violence and the murder of Jews and Israelis by Palestinian
Arabs is generally considered as conforming to Facebook’s “Community
Standards”.
Facebook’s bias, in fact, became so pronounced that in October 2015,
Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center filed an unprecedented lawsuit against
Facebook on behalf of some 20,000 Israelis, to stop allowing Palestinian
Arab terrorists to use the social network to incite violent attacks
against Jews. The complaint sought an injunction against Facebook that
required it to monitor incitement and to respond immediately to
complaints about content that incites people to violence. Shurat Hadin
wrote at the time:
“…Facebook is much more than a neutral internet platform or a mere
‘publisher’ of speech because its algorithms connect the terrorists to
the inciters. Facebook actively assists the inciters to find people who
are interested in acting on their hateful messages by offering friend,
group and event suggestions … Additionally, Facebook often refuses to
take down the inciting pages, claiming that they do not violate its
‘community standards’. Calling on people to commit crimes is not
constitutionally protected speech and endangers the lives of Jews and
Israelis”.
In 2016, Shurat Hadin filed a separate $1 billion lawsuit on behalf of
five victims of Hamas terrorism and their families. They are seeking
damages against Facebook under the U.S. Antiterrorism Act, for
Facebook’s having provided material support and resources to Hamas in
the form of Facebook services, which Hamas then used to carry out their
terrorist activities. The US has officially designated Hamas a “Foreign
Terrorist Organization” which means that it is a criminal offense to
provide material support to such an organization.
Notwithstanding the lawsuits, Facebook’s bias is so strong that it
recently restored Palestinian Arab terrorist group Fatah’s Facebook
page, which incites hatred and violence against Jews — despite having
shut it down only three days earlier. In 2016 alone, this page had a
minimum of 130 posts glorifying terror and the murder of Jews.
It is only a small step from imposing censorship on social media
companies to asking the same of email providers, or ordering postal
authorities to screen letters, magazines and brochures in the event that
citizens spread supposed “xenophobia” and “fake news”. There is ample
precedent for such a course of action on the continent: During the Cold
War, people living behind the Iron Curtain had their private letters
opened by the communist authorities; those passages deemed to be out of
line with the communist orthodoxy, were simply blacked out.
Who would have thought that more than a quarter of a century after the
fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), Western Europe would be reinventing
itself in the image of the Soviet Union?