Germany makes mother of law to delete all hatespeech worldwide

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Maas defended the bill during parliamentary debate last month, describing it as a necessary measure to curb the spread of illegal speech. "The point of the proposed legislation is that statements that violate the law must be deleted," Maas said, according to Deutsche Welle. "These are not examples of freedom of speech. They're attacks on freedom of speech. The worst danger to freedom of speech is a situation where threats go unpunished.”

Maas has been a particularly outspoken critic of Facebook, claiming that the social network should be treated as a media company, which would make it legally liable for hate speech, defamation, and other content published to its platform. The justice minister also criticized Facebook for failing to remove flagged hate speech in 2015, amid rising anti-migrant protests violence across Germany; prosecutors in Hamburg opened an investigation into Facebook’s European head later that year for “ignoring racist posts.”