Prosecutors in Germany have launched a formal investigation of Mark Zuckerberg and other executives at Facebook, the Munich prosecutor's office said Friday, over a complaint that Facebook broke German laws against hate speech and sedition by failing to remove racist hate-posts on the social media service.

A spokesman from the Munich prosecutor's office who spoke to Reuters didn't provide more detail on the nature of the investigation.

The complaint involves some 438 Facebook posts over the past year tha twere flagged as alleged violations of German hate speech law, but not deleted by Facebook. Among the posts are "clear examples of racist hate speech and calls to violence laced with references to Nazi-era genocide," Reuters reports.

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