crime
Künast wins legal battle to delete false quotes
The member of the Bundestag Renate Künast (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) prevailed in court against the Facebook group Meta in a dispute over a defamatory meme. Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The politician Renate Künast is misquoted on the Internet. To force Facebook to delete the Mondays, the Greens go to court. Now there is a verdict.
The member of parliament Renate Künast has won a legal victory against the Facebook group Meta in a dispute over defamatory false quotes.
The Frankfurt district court ruled on Friday that the Greens politician could demand that a certain word-image combination – a meme – be blocked on the social network with a false quote that was foisted on her. The network must also delete variants of this meme with the same core content without further reference to the respective Internet address. The decision is not yet final. (File number 2-03 O 188/21)
Internet users published a picture of Künast on Facebook, to which a false quote on the subject of integration was attached: “Integration begins when you, as a German, learn Turkish.” The politician demanded that the Meta group, as the operator of Facebook, delete the entry. The post was also published in different variants, for example with a different layout and a different web address.
personal rights violated
The judges in Frankfurt ruled that the false quotation violated Künast’s personal rights. A service provider does not have to check all posts posted online for a violation of the law without notice. “After Renate Künast specifically pointed out that the statement attributed to her is a false quote, she does not have to repeat this reference for each further legal violation, stating the URL.” The company has also not proven that it is technically and economically unreasonable to recognize identical and similar memes.
In its judgment, the Künast court also approved monetary compensation of 10,000 euros. Meta has not fulfilled the obligation to free the platform from further false quotes. The judgment can be contested by appeal to the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court.
“We will now wait for the reasons for the verdict and examine further possible steps,” said a spokeswoman for Meta. They work with independent fact-checkers to identify and flag misinformation. “We have removed the false quote reported by Ms. Künast from the Facebook platform and have taken further measures in this case to also identify and remove identical content,” it said.
Künast was supported in the process by the Hateaid organization, which campaigns against hatred and hate speech online. “The verdict is a sensation. The court made it clear that social media has a responsibility to protect users,” Hateaid said on Friday. Above all, operators can no longer claim that the burden of finding illegal content lies solely with those affected.
Künast described the judgment in a joint statement with Hateaid as a “milestone for our democracy”: “This fundamental decision with the obligation to delete all existing false quotes finally makes the platforms responsible.”