Network enforcement as denunciation endorsement? A critical study on legal enforcement in social media

Abstract

Facing the increasing prevalence of hate speech and other personality rights violations on social media, the legislature tries to improve the law enforcement by involving the social media companies. In 2017, the German Bundestag passed a new law, the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), which requires website owners to review the content published on their pages upon it being reported by users and to remove it as soon as possible in the event of a breach of the law. This forces social media operators to establish efficient reporting systems which can create breeding grounds for user denunciation. To get an overview of whether this is really the case, we briefly discuss state surveillance and denunciation and analyse the statistics of content blockings and deletions in five countries (USA, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia and Turkey). In Germany the number of blockings and deletions of content has risen for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube due to the NetzDG, but it has also been found that the majority of reports were unjustified as they did not lead to any restriction or deletion of the content. When comparing the German numbers with those of the other countries investigated, it becomes apparent that after the introduction of the NetzDG in Germany, more content is being blocked and deleted. Also, a comparison of the various laws regulating online content in these countries was conducted. It was found that not only Germany has tightened the regulation of online content and that other countries are also trying to transform the Internet into a more hate free environment.