17]
FranceEdit
Like Austria and Germany, France has laws prohibiting Holocaust denial. Because of this, 80 Facebook posts were blocked in 2013.[10]GermanyEdit
In July 2011, authorities in Germany began to discuss the prohibition of events organized on Facebook. The decision is based on numerous cases of overcrowding by people who were not originally invited.[18] In one instance, 1,600 "guests" attended the 16th birthday party for a Hamburg girl who accidentally posted the invitation for the event as public. After reports of overcrowding, more than a hundred police were deployed for crowd control. A police officer was injured and eleven participants were arrested for assault, property damage and resistance to authorities.[19] In another unexpectedly overcrowded event, 41 young people were arrested and at least 16 injured.[20]In 2013, Facebook revealed Germany had blocked 84 posts from its citizens. These posts contained themes of Holocaust denial, which is illegal there.[10]
In 2015, during the European migrant crisis with large numbers of immigrants entering the country unregulated, a broad discussion about the problems of mass immigration and politics of the actual government took place in social media. Early in 2016, a Bertelsmann company called "Arvato" was mandated to erase comments and contents from Facebook.[21] In the summer of 2016, police in fourteen German states began coordinated raids on the residences of individuals who praised the Nazi regime or referred to refugees as "scum" in a private Facebook group.[22] A law known as NetzDG went into effect starting in 2018 which mandates all websites in Germany, including Facebook, censor such illegal content.[23] A spokesperson for Facebook announced the company's opposition to the law on the grounds that it would lead to overblocking.[24]
