The German legislature has finalised a legislative process which aims to fight online hate speech and hate crime. The bill, drafted in 2020, was not signed by the federal president, because it contained similar provisions to a law that had been found unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court a month earlier. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Category: Germany
One week before the EU elections, the German YouTuber Rezo published an almost hour-long video titled “The destruction of the CDU”. In the video, the influencer – who usually posts light-hearted apolitical content such as YouTube challenges – sets out a broad range of arguments why the disregard of scientific evidence and resulting incompetent policy-making by the German parties CDU, SPD (and also far-right AFD) should convince citizens to vote for other parties. Continue reading
Germany continues to spearhead the regulation of social media. Last year the country made headlines with the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (‘network enforcement law’ or ‘NetzDG’), the most ambitious attempt to regulate platform content moderation processes in Europe to date. Now, the German Broadcasting Authority (Rundfunkkomission) has proposed another law targeting social media platforms, though it has has received far less attention than the NetzDG –and far less than it deserves. Continue reading
Six months after a new German law – the Network Enforcement Act – has come into full effect, social media platforms are tasked to report on illegal hate speech. But as these figures have been made available, what can we learn from them? Researcher Kirsten Gollatz, Fellow Martin J. Riedl and Jens Pohlmann from the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) have a closer look at the reports. Continue reading
In the case of ML and WW v Germany ([2018] ECHR 554) (available only French), the Fifth Section of the Court of Human Rights dismissed an Article 8 “right to be forgotten” application in respect of the historic publication by the media of information concerning a murder conviction. Continue reading
Germany’s infamous network enforcement law – which seeks to more heavily regulate social media – came into force at the start of 2018 to almost unanimous criticism. Continue reading
The German Gesetz zur Verbesserung der Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz) (literally: Law on the improvement of law enforcement in social networks and known as ‘NetzDG’) has attracted much media attention, e.g. here and here, since fully entering into force on 1 January 2018. Continue reading
A German Court has ordered Google not to link to the Lumen (formerly known as “Chilling Effects”) database after it had taken down defamatory content as a result of an earlier Court order. Continue reading
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