An amendment to Germany’s Network Enforcement Act, known as NetzDG, to combat online hate speech goes into effect on Tuesday (1 February), but some of the biggest online platforms have refused to cooperate. EURACTIV Germany reports.
The amended law introduces requirements for online platforms with more than 2 million users, such as Google and Facebook, to pass information to authorities for criminal prosecution. You also have a duty to remove content that violates criminal law and report it to the Federal Criminal Police Agency (BKA).
But these new mandates, originally intended for large online platforms, have been temporarily put on hold.
Google, Meta, Twitter and Tik Tok have filed a lawsuit against the revised law with the Cologne Administrative Court.
As a result of the ongoing litigation, the German Ministry of Justice has pledged not to demand reports from two companies, Meta, which includes Facebook and Instagram, and Google, the parent company of YouTube, until an administrative court has rendered a ruling. . decision. It is not yet known when the Cologne court will rule on the matter.
It’s also unclear whether the Justice Department will decide to exempt Twitter and Tik Tok.
With the new amendments, BKA is expected to receive approximately 250,000 reports annually under NetzDG, which will result in approximately 150,000 criminal cases.
To handle the expected increase in reports, the BKA has set up a “Central Reporting Office for Criminal Content on the Internet” or ZMI.
About 200 police officers will facilitate “consistent prosecution of creators of such criminal content,” a BKA spokesman told newspaper RND.
This task will be temporarily carried out by other state reporting agencies combating hate speech as long as large online platforms are suspended from their obligations to report illegal content to the BKA. Der Spiegel indicate.
However, EU law provisions may soon replace NetzDG.
The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which is currently being negotiated, has a similar impetus to NetzDG, stipulating strict online platform requirements. German politicians therefore often interpret NetzDG as a blueprint for his DSA.
Negotiations between the Council and the European Parliament on the DSA are already in full swing and started on Monday.
French President Emmanuel Macron has announced his intention to finalize the DSA during France’s presidency of the EU Council until the end of June.
[Edited by Luca Bertuzzi/ Alice Taylor]
