Facebook Responds to Accusations about Allowing Hate Speech and Illegal Activities

CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg 

Number one social media giant in the world, Facebook, is faced with a lot of pressure from European lawmakers after the Germany's interior minister called on the organization to swiftly remove all hateful and illegal posts from their site.

This happened on the same day Mark Zuckerberg said that the free-content advertising network would not turn into a media empire. The call received from Thomas de Maiziere came just less than a week after the MPs committee of the UK concluded that Twitter Facebook and Google were allegedly failing to restrict extremism on their services.

"Facebook is meant to take down every form of racist content that in anyway calls for violence from all its pages on its initiative before it receives any complaint," according to de Maiziere this Monday. "Facebook has a very important economic position and as such, it has an immensely important social responsibility and status to maintain." But Facebook, which let go all human editors, replacing them with an ineffective algorithm on Friday, is reluctant about editing content that is shared by users on its site because the company doesn't want to be labeled as a publisher. This is because the moment it does that, the multi-million-dollar firm would be prone to domestic libel laws.

Subsequently, Zuckerberg reaffirmed their stance on Monday at live a Q&A session in Italy. "No, we are a tech company, not a media or publishing company," Zuckerberg said after one of the participants asked if Facebook was a news editor. 

He also said that the company, Facebook builds only the tools, and is not responsible for producing any content.

 "Our aim is to give users the tools to curate. Every user gets to program their personal Facebook experience. Social media is the most diverse kind of media that has eve to exist."

Interior Minister de Maiziere, Germany, however, is seriously concerned with the lack of speedy interaction from Facebook operators when it comes wiping off posts that carry extremism speech or any form of illegal content.

Public policy head of Facebook in Germany, Eva-Maria Kirschsieper, in response to the criticism, said: "We pride ourselves as a part of larger German society and also a part of the German economy. We know that we have a grave social responsibility and as such, we want to live up to this responsibility. You should know that we take this issue rather seriously indeed."