[yAnonymous]

German here. Our government has pressured Facebook to allow private corporations (that of course are close to the government) to delete Facebook content -posts and pages with millions of followers- for political reasons as they see fit.

The legal process was completely removed. They use this to help their election campaigns by branding government critical content as extremist and having it removed without due process.

You'd think that when they remove content like that, they'd report the offenders to legal authorities -because after all, they are only allowed to remove content that is clearly illegal- but in most cases they don't. They just want the content gone and move on, which makes it very clear that this is just a censorship tool and their generous interpretation of illegal hate speech wouldn't hold up in any court.

[wildebaard]

Well, if the definition of free speech is 'it should be allowed on Facebook' then that's a horrible definition :)

It does point toward a bigger issue, where Facebook is used and trusted by so many users that they do not access alternative sources of information.

[yAnonymous]

No. The companies involved (Arvato/Bertelsmann) get to make their own rules. Facebook doesn't even have a say in this, although they're paying for it as required by the law. They were threatened with fines in the millions (up to 50 mil) if they didn't comply.

The situation is absurd. Facebook is legally required to pay for censorship by companies with close ties to the government.

[wildebaard]

If I understand you correctly, this censorship only applies to Facebook. If that's correct, then I still do not agree with the statement 'there is no free speech' unless Facebook is your/the sole source of information. However, I do agree that it's problematic.

[undreren]

Source?

[yAnonymous]

https://www.arvato.com/en/about/press/2018/facebook-and-arva...

Directly from the devil himself.

Arvato belongs to Bertelsmann. Here's a German article about how close they are to the government.

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Lobbyismus-Koenig-Bertelsma...