STASTI Seal
Last week I wrote that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was caving to pro-Muslim pressure. This comes after a series of revelations in which German Chancellor Angela Merkel directly asked Mr. Zuckerberg to delete “offensive” posts against Islam and Muslims, as well as a “friend request” by Turkish President Erdogan praising certain statements Mr. Zuckerberg posted to his Facebook page about Islam. I wrote that it would only be a matter of time before Facebook began censoring any perceived criticism of Islam, and possibly even aid in the prosecution of such comments.
It is now official- Facebook, Google, and Twitter will be doing all of the above, but in Germany. In a full-blown deja-vu moment of her STASI days, Facebook in Germany will begin deleting posts and providing information about who posted the deleted comments to German police for further investigation. From Russia Today:
The companies committed on Tuesday to removing “illegal content promptly, that is, within 24 hours,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said, as quoted by AFP.
“Complaints will be examined by specialist teams. And the benchmark to be applied will be German law and no longer just the terms of use of each network,” Maas added.
German Social Justice Minister Heiko Maas
The BBC also reported on this, and added:
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the measures would ensure German law was applied online.
Social media cannot “become a funfair for the far right,” he said.
…
“When the limits of free speech are trespassed, when it is about criminal expressions, sedition, incitement to carry out criminal offences that threaten people, such content has to be deleted from the net,” Mr Maas said.
“And we agree that as a rule this should be possible within 24 hours.“
To everybody else- keep posting while you still can. The warning shots have been fired. While South Park’s PC principal is not real, the message is clear- we are living through the twilight of freedom of expression.
-- Delivered by Feed43 service
Post a Comment