Bitkom on the debate about account blocking in social media

[hasan018542]

Commenting on the recent debate about the blocking of US President Donald Trump's user accounts on several social media platforms, Bitkom CEO Dr. Bernhard Rohleder said:

"We are surprised by the federal government's very fundamental criticism of the blocking of Donald Trump's accounts by some large platforms . The federal government is thus making a 180-degree turn in its policy against hate speech and criminal content on the Internet . With the NetzDG, the federal government recently legally obliged the operators of large platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to intervene actively, independently and without further request from courts or authorities if they discover criminal content on their platforms.

If they do not do this within 24 hours, and in difficult iran gambling data cases within a week, they face fines running into the millions. The fact that this practice will also restrict freedom of expression has not only been warned about many times by Bitkom, but the federal government has knowingly accepted it. Now, in the current case, the platform operators are not referring to the NetzDG, but are acting in the spirit that is binding on them under the NetzDG.

The federal government may accuse the platform operators of overshooting the mark when they not only delete individual tweets or posts, but completely shut down an account. But they cannot be accused of restricting freedom of expression after the NetzDG called on them to do exactly that with criminal content. Such an attitude is deeply contradictory. The federal government will have to decide whether or not it wants to force operators to intervene independently on their platforms.