Hamburg prosecutors say managing director may be held responsible for social platform’s alleged failure to remove hate speech

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Prosecutors in Hamburg have launched an investigation into the European head of Facebook over the social platform’s alleged failure to remove racist hate speech, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor has said.

The move was announced on Tuesday as German politicians and celebrities voiced concern about the rise of xenophobic comments in German on Facebook and on other social media as the country struggles to cope with the influx of about 1 million refugees this year.

Facebook’s Hamburg-based managing director for northern, central and eastern Europe, Martin Ott, may be held responsible for the social platform not removing hate speech, the spokeswoman for the city’s prosecutor said. “We are at a very early stage,” she added.

Last month the prosecutor launched an investigation into three other Facebook managers for the same issue.



The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, urged Facebook to do more this year on the matter, while the country’s justice ministry wants to set up a taskforce with the company, other social networks and internet service providers with the aim of identifying criminal posts more quickly and taking them down.

Facebook said it would not commenting on the investigation. “But we can say that the allegations lack merit and there has been no violation of German law by Facebook or its employees,” it added.

The company earlier announced a partnership with a group called FSM, which voluntarily monitors multimedia service providers, and said it would encourage its users to push back against racism.