At the request of its users, Twitter must remove offensive and inaccurate tweets. As the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court ruled, the platform will in future also be obliged to delete identical and analogous repetitions without being asked. This is part of the protection of personal rights.
According to a judgment by the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court, Twitter must independently and comprehensively remove defamatory or false statements about a person. The Hessian court ruled in a judgment published on Wednesday in summary proceedings that the Baden-Württemberg anti-Semitism commissioner Michael Blume had initiated. However, this is not yet legally binding.
Blume went to court after being the target of abuse and defamatory allegations on Twitter. According to the verdict, those affected have a right to injunctive relief in the event of a violation of personal rights, which means that Twitter must stop the distribution of the relevant publications and delete them. This claim therefore also extends to all re-publications in other tweets that repeat the illegal claims verbatim or despite “certain deviations” with an “identical core of the statement”, the court found.
The responsible press chamber clarified that the obligation to check corresponding newly published tweets results from the legal injunctive relief of those affected and should therefore be demanded of the company. Twitter can be expected to “determine for itself whether the characteristic of the specific form of injury is expressed in a modification and is therefore essentially the same,” it said in its decision. (Az 2-03 O 325/22)
According to the digital human rights organization HateAid, which is supporting Blume in his legal dispute with Twitter, the process is aimed at “the company’s inadequate content moderation”. Twitter almost always left the massively defamatory and false allegations about Blume online for months, despite its repeated reports via the legally prescribed procedures in Germany.
Blume himself spoke of a “legal success”. He dedicates this to US Corona advisor Anthony Fauci, he said in a statement issued jointly with HateAid. Fauci was publicly attacked a few days ago by the new Twitter owner Elon Musk. This had called for an indictment against Fauci, which caused outrage.
US billionaire Musk bought Twitter in October for 44 billion US dollars and began a chaotic, radical restructuring of the short message service used worldwide. Among other things, he dismissed the entire executive floor and around half of the 7,500 employees. It is also observed with concern whether Musk could limit the fight against the spread of hate messages and false messages on Twitter.
According to the Frankfurt court, the case relates to comments from September of this year in which Blume, among other things, alleged “closeness to pedophilia” or described him as “part of an anti-Semitic pack”. All of these “defamatory allegations” are “untrue”, the judges ruled at the same time. However, your decision is not yet final. An appeal to the Higher Regional Court is possible.
The same chamber of the Frankfurt district court had committed the Facebook mother Meta in April to a more consistent fight against fake news. In a legal dispute over the dissemination of a false quote by Green Party politician Renate Künast, she condemned the company to independently removing all variants of it. It is not necessary for the injured party to point out any further publication.
