Austrian Court Orders Facebook To Remove Hate Posts
Facebook has been ordered to remove posts identified as hate speech by an Austrian court, but not just in that country. It has to delete those posts worldwide from across the social network platform.
This case was brought by Austria’s Green party over insults to its leader and has international ramifications as the court ruled the postings must be deleted across the platform and not just in Austria, a point that had been left open in an initial ruling.
The case comes at a time where legislators around Europe are considering ways of forcing Facebook, Google, Twitter and others to rapidly remove hate speech or incitement to violence.
The Viennese appeals court ruled that Facebook must remove the postings against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig as well as any verbatim re-postings, and said merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg stated that, hate speech has no place on the platform and the company has published a policy paper on how it will deal with false news.