Munich Court To Try Facebook's Zuckerberg For Inciting Hatred (dw.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deutsche Welle: A Munich court has opened a lawsuit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, German media reported on 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 Spiegel, the complaint comes from the Wurzburg-based attorney Chan-jo 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.

Comments

Oh Germany...

[TiggertheMad]

The fact that that Zuckerberg is Jewish makes the fact that he is being named in a German lawsuit about hate speech an holocaust denial particularly deliciously ironic.

Why we never should handed over control of DNS

[DarkOx]

This happening to FB is ironic in that they advocated for the hand over, but this is how the rest of the world is going to treat freedom of speech online.

It was shameful shameful thing we did handing off the control to the UN.

This is a good example of where our state department ought to stand up for an American company. The message to Germany ought to be

"Screw you guys its an American website, Zuck can publish whatever the hell he wants and if you try to come after him or his assets we would be forced to retaliate against German citizens and German companies with assets in the USA. If you don't like his website, firewall it"

Re:Why we never should handed over control of DNS

[Calydor]

And the US certainly isn't trying to make everyone forget the slave period ever existed by banning any kind of racist speech and rewriting literary classics to be politically correct, right?

Re:Why we never should handed over control of DNS

[phantomfive]

Here's what's been whitewashed (by both the Germans and the Americans):

Anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany was enormous before Hitler. Hitler wasn't some propaganda monster, he merely tapped into a current of hate that already existed. The hate that existed against Jews in Germany (and Austria) is disgusting. Look at some of the things Wagner said about Mendelssohn as one small example. Mahler was surrounded by hate for a decade merely because of his ancestry.

The Nuremberg show trials were show trials exactly for that reason: so we could blame it all on the leaders, and get over hating each other.

Re:Sorry NO

[duke_cheetah2003]

Germany can not sue because the German government itself is criminally negligent because they can block it if they want to. Hence for Germany to sue Facebook, Germany must also sue itself.

You must be one those people who thinks gun manufacturers are liable when someone shoots someone else with a gun they made.

Do you also think car manufacturers should be liable for automobile accidents?

What about refrigerators? Is it the manufacturers fault when your food spoils? No wait, it must be the electric company's fault for not supplying enough power.

This broken logic has no place here.