His selfie went viral for all the wrong reasons. Now this refugee is suing Facebook.
His selfie went viral for all the wrong reasons. Now this
refugee is suing Facebook.
By Stephanie Kirchner, Anthony Faiola February 5, 2017 10
hrs ago
German Chancellor Angela Merkel poses for a selfie with a
migrant from Syria after she visited a shelter for migrants on September 10,
2015, in Berlin.© Sean
BERLIN — On a September day in 2015, Syrian refugee Anas
Modamani took one of Germany’s most emblematic selfies. Snapping himself
alongside Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to his Berlin shelter, he
captured an image that became a symbol of her momentous decision to allow more
than 1 million asylum seekers into Germany.
It also turned Modamani into the target of far-right
conspiracies. Fake stories and doctored photographs first linked him to the
March 2016 terrorist attacks in Brussels, then to the Berlin Christmas market
attack in December. Another image even falsely claimed that he was a suspect in
a recent assault on a homeless man.
So now he is taking aim at the messenger: Facebook.
The suit is seeking to compel Facebook to act faster —
even preemptively — to remove such material, and thereby concede that the
social network is also a media company and therefore liable for the content it
publishes.
The lawsuit, which goes to court Monday, marks the latest
attempt to hold Facebook more accountable for an upsurge in fake news. Germany,
Europe’s most populous nation, with cherished notions of personal privacy and a
low tolerance for propaganda, has emerged as a particularly fierce battleground
for the outlet.
“Facebook only deletes those URLs that are pointed out to
them in written form,” said Modamani’s attorney, Chan-jo Jun. “We are fighting
for all reposts to be deleted.”
As Facebook has come under fire for allowing the spread
of fake news, the company has promised to take steps to combat the problem
while maintaining that it is merely a platform for sharing information, not
generating it.
The Europeans have been particularly aggressive. In May,
the European Commission agreed on a new code of conduct with Facebook and other
social-media platforms under which they would respond to reports of
questionable content within 24 hours.
But nowhere in Europe has the pressure been stronger than
in Germany — a country where the memory of Nazi propaganda and Cold War-era
machinations have created a culture strongly adverse to hate speech and false
reports. A proliferation of far-right and pro-Russian websites also have
trained their sights on Merkel as she campaigns for reelection in a vote set
for September, putting the issue of fake news front and center in the public
debate.
In response to calls for change, Facebook last month
announced the start of a new effort in Germany in partnership with the
nonprofit journalism network Correctiv. With the help of professional
journalists, reports shared by users and identified as fake would be labeled as
potentially suspect or false.
Yet the Germans may push Facebook to go even further. The
country’s Justice Ministry is monitoring how quickly Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube delete potentially libelous fake news, reports inciting hate and other
content considered illegal under domestic law. If the results show that
Facebook has not made progress since a similar test in September, the German
government has threatened to force it to comply.
“We’re considering concrete legislative measures,” said
Justice Ministry spokesman Philip Scholz. He added, “We’re also considering
fines as a final option.”
Modamani’s attorney has sought to sway German prosecutors
to build a case against Facebook for years. Although prosecutors in Hamburg and
Munich took a look at his claims that the network was allowing the spread of
incendiary and hateful material, thus far they have failed to take action.
In the Modamani case, the suit is seeking to force
Facebook not only to delete specific false or illegal posts reported by users,
but also to adopt special filters that search the network and remove all other
references to that content. Jun said that although Facebook claims to have
deleted fake posts attacking his client, he found reposts of the images as
recently as last week.
The claims center largely around three images, which were
widely spread and which Jun claims could still be circulating on Facebook. One
shows the selfie of Modamani and Merkel next to security footage of a group of
young men suspected of trying to set a homeless man on fire at a Berlin subway
station on Christmas Eve. The face of one of the suspects is circled and
falsely identified as Modamani.
“Merkel made selfie with one of the offenders in 2015!”
it reads.
In another incident, a photomontage circulated on
Facebook of Modamani with Merkel against the backdrop of a Berlin Christmas
market following the December attack. The caption reads, “They are Merkel’s
dead.”
An earlier claim had falsely linked Modamani to last
year’s Brussels attacks, alleging that Merkel “took a selfie with a terrorist.”
The image was initially posted by a user called “Anonymous” and, according to
Jun, reposted at least 1,000 times. Many times more users saw it.
“I love Facebook — I found an apartment through the
network,” Modamani told Spiegel Online last month. “But I also hate Facebook,
because this Photoshop stuff simply never ceases.”
In a statement, Facebook said that it had “already
quickly disabled access to content” that Modamani’s legal representatives had
reported. “So we do not believe that legal action here is necessary or that it
is the most effective way to resolve the situation.”
شركة تنظيف مطابخ بالاحساء
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