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A UN human rights committee examining the status of civil and political rights in Germany took aim at the country’s Network Enforcement Act, or NetzDG, criticizing the hate speech law in a recent report for enlisting social media companies to carry out government censorship, with no judicial oversight of content removal.
The United National Human Rights Committee, which oversees the implementation of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), expressed concerns, as we and others have, that the regulation forces tech companies to behave as the internet police with power to decide what is free speech and what is hate speech. NetzDG requires large platforms to remove content that appears “manifestly illegal” within 24 hours of having been alerted of it, which will likely lead to take downs of lawful speech as platforms err on the side of censorship to avoid penalties. The absence of court oversight of content removal was deemed especially alarming, as it limits “access to redress in cases where the nature of content is disputed.”
“The Committee is concerned that these provisions and their application could have a chilling effect on online expression,” according to a November 11 Human Rights Committee report on Germany. The report is the committee’s concluding observations of its independent assessment of Germany’s compliance with its human rights obligations under the ICCPR treaty.
It’s important that the UN body is raising alarms over NetzDG. We’ve seen other countries, including those under authoritarian rule, take inspiration from the regulation, including Turkey. A recent study reports that at least thirteen countries—includ
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Read the original article: UN Human Rights Committee Criticizes Germany’s NetzDG for Letting Social Media Platforms Police Online Speech