This is an open letter from media lawyer Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel to Mark Zuckerberg. Read the open letter in German here.
Meta Platforms Inc.
Herr Mark Zuckerberg
1 Meta Way Menlo Park
CA 94025-1444
USA
Your remarks of January 7th 2025 - More Speech and Fewer Mistakes
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg!
I would like to congratulate you on your remarks of January 7, 2025. Your announcements are of eminent relevance for freedom of speech on social media platforms and given the paramount importance of this form of communication for freedom of expression as a whole. You have announced a number of important measures and changes which I welcome.
Your company and I have had and still have a very close relationship since at least 2018. In German courts. I have sued Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. well over 100 times on behalf of private users, the media and myself. In 2018, I obtained the first injunction ever issued against an unauthorized deletion by Facebook. I have also obtained a whole series of legally enforceable bans due to the unlawful fact checks published on Facebook (of dpa or, mostly, “Correctiv”). Meta Platforms lost more than 90% of these lawsuits.
In May 2024, I published the non-fiction book “Die digitale Bevormundung” (“The digital paternalism”), which reached number 1 on the bestseller lists and was one of the best-selling non-fiction books of 2024 in Germany. The book deals with the fight in court for the enforcement of freedom of expression against social media. Facebook and Instagram play an important role here, but also X (Twitter) and Google/YouTube. For example: X lost a case that challenged the blocking of the well-known New York Post article about Hunter Biden's notebook close to the 2020 general election in the United States. X lost the appeal as well. YouTube has deleted an excerpt from a series that was broadcast on public television and whose protagonists were awarded a German Television Prize.
Foto: Markus Hibbeler
About the Author
The author is one of the most renowned and successful German media lawyers. According to Die Zeit, he has “written legal history" with his lawsuits against social media, while Die Welt stated: “Hardly any other lawyer in Germany has done as much for freedom of expression as Steinhöfel“. In 2024, he brought 16 press and personal rights cases against the Federal Republic of Germany and won all of them before the Federal Constitutional Court, higher administrative courts and civil courts. His non-fiction book “Die digitale Bevormundung“ (FBV, 224 pages, 18 euros), published in May 2024, reached number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list. Julian Reichelt called the work “A manifesto of freedom of opinion“.
The reason I mention this is to point out that I have a professional connection to these issues.
A few examples of how Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. dealt with the constitutional and contractual rights of its German users in court.
As the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” wrote on September 13, 2018:
“However, if a comment is not only deleted, but this deletion is upheld following the user’s complaint and defended in the subsequent court proceedings by a major international law firm in detailed pleadings, then you are probably not doing anyone an injustice if you declare the deletion to be part of the officially pursued corporate policy - and draw your conclusions from this.”
This is true.
“Hate speech”: How quoting a petition becomes “hate speech”
In March 2018, a group of journalists, artists and intellectuals published the “Joint Declaration 2018” as a criticism of the German government’s refugee policy. Shortly after its publication, the declaration was turned into a petition to the German Bundestag. The Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag examined the constitutional requirements, affirmed them and published the petition on the parliament’s website. When a Facebook user quoted this statement verbatim and encouraged people to sign it, the post was deleted by Facebook as “hate speech” and the user was blocked for 30 days. Mind you, this was after the text had been reviewed by the Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag in accordance with Article 45c of the Basic Law and had also been published on the parliament’s website.
Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. (at that time Facebook Ireland Ltd.) defended the deletion in court. You were defeated in the summary proceedings as in the main proceedings.
Can Heinrich Heine be a preacher of hatred?
Heinrich Heine, who is certainly known to you, was one of the most important German writers, poets and journalists of the 19th century. Universities, schools, squares and streets in Germany are named after him. His books were burned under the Nazi regime of terror because he had the “misfortune” of not only being a free spirit but also a Jew.
One of Heinrich Heine’s quotes is very popular with the users of social media. It reads: „The German is like the slave who obeys his master, without shackles, without whip, by the mere word, indeed by a look. The bondage is in himself, in his soul; worse than material slavery is the slavery of the mind. The Germans must be liberated from within, nothing helps from the outside.“
The Berlin district court in a case of a publishing house (Achgut.com) vs Facebook Ireland Ltd. about your deletion of Heinrich Heine’s remark evaluated the quote of the great poet like this:
„The quote is a critical view of a German (Heinrich Heine, 1797-1856) on his own countrymen, and it represents an expression of opinion on the obedience of Germans, with Heine calling for liberation from within. His language is neither violent nor misanthropic and his statement is not exclusionary or isolating. The statement refers to the nature of the Germans at the time when Heine wrote his text, more than 160 years ago. The text is a now long since historical finding, and it is based on the assumption that Germans can change (’liberate‘) themselves.“
For Facebook, the German Jew Heinrich Heine’s quote was “hate speech”. Users learned upon deletion of the Heine quote posted: “Your post violates our community standards on hate speech and degradation.”
This did not happen once, but again and again and lead to a series of lawsuits over the same citation, which continues to this day. There is a series of convictions and multiple five-figure fines imposed on Meta for violations of court prohibitions in this context. In court, Meta admitted that the citation did not violate its community standards. Only to delete it again in another profile of another user a few days later. And again. And again. And again Meta was defeated in court. Groundhog day on steroids. The ongoing digital annihilation of a famous Jewish poet by your company.
Presenting Meta to its users and the German courts in this manner, i.e. by deliberately and repeatedly breaking the law by deleting content that you yourself consider legitimate, is not something Meta can be proud of.
Since 2016, I have been running the page “Sperre durch FB - Wall of Shame” (“Blocked by FB - Wall of Shame”), which documents content that is unlawful and has not been deleted despite being reported and - far more frequently - unlawful deletions or blocks by Meta. Numerous media outlets incl. the BBC have reported about this page, and the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag referred to the documentation in an expert report. In October 2024, eight years after it was founded, Facebook blocked the page for “imitation”. On January 10, 2025, I received your message that the page had been reinstated following my complaint. In fact, it was more likely due to the fact that Meta in Ireland had been served with the injunction I had obtained from the Hamburg Regional Court.
Let me add some thoughts and information regarding the fact-checkers Meta employed in Germany.
The German press agency (dpa) and an organization called “Correctiv” are employed by Meta in Germany as fact-checkers. Were you aware that both are financially supported by the German government? Did Meta really believe that media outlets that receive money from the government are sufficiently independent to be given such an important task?
We recently obtained a restraining order vs the dpa from the Hamburg district court because of an unlawful fact check. However, I consider “Correctiv” to be much more problematic and am firmly convinced that Meta should reconsider its cooperation immediately once it is aware of all the facts. The managing director of Correctiv repeatedly lied in court in a lawsuit against a fact check published by Correctiv on Meta. He claimed Correctiv to be certified by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) when it was not. The Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court has legally banned Meta and Correctiv from publishing a series of fact checks that Correctiv had written.
The Higher Regional Court „found that the [Correctiv] fact check constituted a disparagement of the journalistic performance of the plaintiff [Tichys Einblick] that was no longer acceptable when weighing up the interests involved.“
In addition, Correctiv is currently involved in a journalism scandal in Germany due to false reporting, which has also led to several court bans. Because of this, on December 11, 2024, the Berlin Regional Court (2 O 296/24 eV) ruled that Correctiv can be accused of “dirty lies”.
This is who Meta cooperates with in Germany. It is time to terminate your cooperation.
These are only a few examples. Meta has caused considerable and inexcusable damage to freedom of expression in Germany over the years. It was high time for your change of direction.
If you are sincere regarding the significant announcements you made, we will no longer be antagonists in court, but will both stand up for one of the most important basic human rights of all – Freedom of speech as enshrined in your First Amendment and our Article 5 of the Constitution of Germany.
Then, as you rightly emphasized in your remarks, the opponents will be other ones. A liberated climate of debate will certainly be able to cope with voices such as those just published in a commentary on your measures in the German „Wirtschaftswoche“: „With the abolition of fact checks, opinions...in the USA will in future have no consequences...“. We live in a time when a journalist demands consequences for an opinion. This is also covered by freedom of expression, even if it shows a clearly unconstitutional mindset.
It is a sad fact that in democratic societies and governments one encounters stubborn enemies of freedom of expression. And you correctly emphasized that “Europe has an ever increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship.“ Over here, we are dealing with state actors who outsource tasks to NGOs, who finance them and who then do things that are forbidden to the state itself. The main antagonist is to be located in Brussels and in the mindset of those bureaucrats that invented the Digital Services Act. I consider this regulation to be as dangerous as in parts unconstitutional. And again, I agree with you, when you state: “The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government.“
Perhaps the United States will have to liberate Germany and Europe for a second time.
Bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels and other European capitals fear for their power. The loss of freedom of expression is accepted as collateral damage. Many protagonists are unscrupulous and dangerous. But perhaps, hopefully, we are experiencing a tsunami of freedom. I wish and hope that you will do everything you have announced quickly and relentlessly.
¡Viva la libertad, carajo!
Yours sincerely
Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel
Do you have feedback? Please write an email to briefe@berliner-zeitung.de
