German Justice Minister Heiko Maas wants Facebook Inc. to remove racist posts targeting asylum seekers after several attacks on refugee camps in Germany over the past week.
Facebook should “urgently” review its practices when dealing with the posts, he told the company in an Aug. 26 letter obtained by Bloomberg News. Numerous users have complained to the ministry that Facebook didn’t remove xenophobic posts even after they were flagged and reviewed, arguing that the comments don’t violate its community standards. That didn’t go down well in Berlin.
It is incomprehensible that “photos of certain body parts are automatically deleted because of moral concerns, yet racist and xenophobic statements aren’t immediately removed,” Maas wrote in the letter, which was reported earlier by Tagesspiegel newspaper.
“There must be no mistaken tolerance for users that offensively preach xenophobia and racism.” He invited Facebook for talks Sept. 14 in the ministry.
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