Germany probes Facebook on hate incitement

German prosecutors said on Monday that they had launched a probe after receiving a complaint that alleged that top Facebook bosses including founder Mark Zuckerberg were condoning hate speech, as pressure grows on the social network to clamp down on racist content.

The probe comes as top politicians are ratcheting up warnings against the US group, with the German justice ministry mulling possible penalties if Facebook failed to remove offensive commentaries after they had been flagged. Concern has been rising over the vitriolic comments on Facebook and Twitter in Germany, which have gained intensity as public misgivings grow in some quarters over the almost 900,000 asylum seekers who arrived last year.

The spokesman of the Munich prosecution service, Florian Weinzierl, said that “a complaint has been filed by a lawyer that accuses, among others, Mr Zuckerberg” of “the offence of incitement”. It was being examined “whether there has been criminal conduct”, he said, adding that investigators were looking into whether German penal law applied in this case.

Lawyer Chan-jo Jun, who initiated the claim, said he had compiled a list of 438 cases including incitement of hate and violence as well as support for terrorist groups made on Facebook, but which he said the social network had failed to delete even though they had been repeatedly flagged as offensive speech.

“The management violated German law, by not removing illegal content from Facebook despite being notified, and allowing the content to be publicly available,” Mr Jun said, adding the complaint also targetted the Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and managing director of the northern Europe region Martin Ott.