Meta, the American parent company of the social network Facebook, has been dragged into court several times in Germany. It was always about hatred and hatred, for example, insults or lies against the former Consumer Protection Minister Renate Künast (Greens). And it was always about the fact that Facebook didn’t want to delete or track such individual online abuse.
Now a plaintiff is trying to make the American group take on something more fundamental. Jürgen Resch, the managing director of the German Environmental Aid, complained to the Berlin Regional Court, and he demanded that Facebook not only delete individual abuse against him – but that an entire Facebook group with more than 50,000 members be closed. If it were to succeed, it would have a new quality. The parties will meet in court for the first time next Tuesday.
“Who’s going to hunt him down?” wrote one in the chat
It’s about a Facebook group that “Stop the German Environmental Aid (DUH)!” is called. The hatred of Jürgen Resch, who is committed with his organization to to ban high-emission diesel vehicles from the roads. Two employees from the automotive industry, who are known by name, administer the group, in which there are many complaints about the “discrimination” against diesel drivers, but Resch is also repeatedly defamed personally. “Who’s going to hunt him down?” Writes one person in the chat. Another replies: “Snipers”.
This is how it goes back and forth, the participants rock each other up. Soon someone writes: “We should all put everyone together and hire someone.” Someone posts a photo of ammunition, with the text: “Get in the ear, stay in the head. Heckler & Koch”. Jürgen Resch himself says that such sayings already have consequences in real life, for example someone sent him a cartridge case in the mail. Public events in which he participates sometimes have to be protected by the police.
More than 300 criminal charges
Resch has already filed more than 300 criminal charges against Facebook for such threats. Without a doubt, it is punishable if someone on the social network calls for a meeting at Resch’s private place of residence on Lake Constance to beat him up together – “You are asked to appear numerously” – even if this does not happen. But the wheels of criminal justice grind slowly. “You have to wait six months or a year,” says Resch. Facebook also often leaves the posts for weeks, even if he complains. “I understand anyone who says when faced with such threats, I won’t do it to myself,” he says. “But then our civil society will go to the dogs.”
That’s why Resch, supported by the Berlin lawyer Juliane Schütt, is trying to force the Facebook group to take a bigger, more thorough step – namely to shut down chat groups in which a particularly large number of threats are expressed. It is questionable whether this is legally possible. The Network Enforcement Act, which was passed in 2017 and only tightened again last year, does not actually provide for such a claim.
“According to this logic,” criticizes the lawyer Schütt, referring to the situation so far, “Mr. Resch would have to spend several hours every day combing through the relevant groups, reading the latest fantasies of violence against himself, marking them, entering them in a form and then wait to see if Meta or the public prosecutor’s office will take action. That’s not reasonable.”
It would make more sense, Resch argues, if the Berlin district court were to decide according to general principles of civil law that Facebook has a duty to spare a person affected this unfortunate situation – and simply to shut down well-known hate chat groups across the board.
