Facebook must ban abusive content, says German Justice Minister Maas | News | DW.COM | 27.08.2015

Heiko Maas wants Facebook to better enforce its community standards to rein in abusive users. Given the recent rise in anti-migrant and xenophobic posts, he has called for a meeting with Facebook's European managers.

...In the letter, which he sent to Facebook's European head office in Dublin as well as to its German subsidiary, he says the social media site's community standards needed to be more efficient and transparent.

In the wake of the recent openly xenophobic and hateful attacks on and protests at refugee camps in Germany, Maas said that the Justice Ministry had received many complaints about abusive content not being banned on Facebook.

Often, users get a message saying that the posts they reported did not violate Facebook's community standards without giving any further explanation "even in very obvious cases," according to Maas.

He says this standard response had become a "farce" and that users were struggling to understand why Facebook is quick to ban nudity, for example, referring to its community standards, but often fails to ban xenophobic and racist posts.