Germany Vows to Work With Facebook to Tackle Racist Posts

In 2013, amidst concern over content that promoted violence against women, Facebook also pledged to review its policies on hate speech.

The social network on Monday said it would set up a partnership with a German company that evaluates whether inappropriate content flagged by people falls under freedom of speech or is illegal under German law.

The wave of migrants and refugees flooding into Europe, in particular Gemany, has led to a sharp increase on the hateful comments posted as comments, statuses, and messages on the social media platform, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Facebook said it would work with organizations in Germany “to develop appropriate solutions to counter xenophobia and racism and to represent this online”.

How Facebook plans to deal with the issue?

For dealing with offensive or prohibited content, Facebook typically relies on user reports, but now the firm has partnered with a German watchdog group, Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers.

Opposition Greens party co-chief Katrin Goering-Eckardt a number of days in the past learn out in a YouTube clip a litany of verbal assaults that had been posted on her Facebook web page, and urged the corporate to “lastly be sure that such hatred and filth” is deleted.

The minister had voiced anger at the way content involving certain parts of the body were immediately deleted by Facebook operators, while the network had not removed racist or xenophobic comments even after complaints by users.

And a German TV journalist’s impassioned call last month for an “uprising of decent people” against racism and attacks on asylum-seekers was viewed more than five million times via Facebook alone within 48 hours, drawing an outpouring of both support and scorn.

Facebook stated in April it will not permit the social community to be used to promote hate speech or terrorism because it unveiled a large-ranging replace of its global group requirements.

He also questioned whether Facebook was adhering to its own guidelines.

“The majority of the 27 million people who use Facebook in Germany do so in a very positive manner”, said Facebook Germany’s policy manager Eva-Maria Kirschsieper in a statement.