Künast is suing Facebook

Because strangers put a wrong quote in her mouth on Facebook, the Green politician Künast received numerous hateful comments. Now she is suing the Internet giant and calling for more consistent action against such fake news.

The Green politician Renate Künast has filed a lawsuit against Facebook at the regional court in Frankfurt am Main. According to Künast, the reason for this is a meme that is widespread on the Internet in which the politician is given a wrong quote. Accordingly, Künast is said to have said that integration means that Germans also have to learn Turkish. This false quote was repeatedly shared on Facebook and led to hateful comments against the politician.

Content with the same meaning should also be deleted

The lawyer Matthias Pilz said the lawsuit is intended to bring about a decision of principle. The goal is that platforms not only have to delete reported content, but also identical and meaningful content. In addition, those affected should be entitled to compensation for pain and suffering. “It cannot be that I, as an individual affected, have to make it my life’s mission to search the entire Facebook network in order to search for every copy of a defamatory false quote, report it and then have it deleted,” said Künast.

Support from organization for those affected

According to information from “Spiegel”, Künast is supported by the Hate Aid organization for those affected. If such false information about private individuals were uploaded and shared thousands of times, this could destroy life, said Hate Aid managing director Anna-Lena von Hodenberg accordingly. The organization’s advice center is working on dozens of similar cases, journalists, activists and local politicians are particularly hard hit. In the current case, Facebook had agreed to at least delete all identical copies of the controversial post. A Facebook spokesman said: “We have removed the incorrect quote reported by Ms. Künast from the German Facebook platform and informed Ms. Künast that we are also taking steps to identify and remove identical content.”