Syrian refugee Anas Modamani has filed a lawsuit against Facebook in Germany after a selfie he snapped with Chancellor Angela Merkel spread on social media and flagged as fake news. He claimed that stories on the social website are connecting him to terrorism.
Modami is requesting the social media giant to prevent the photo from being shared and reposted. He also added that he wants Facebook to delete all fake news on the website.
According to The New York Times, a court in Würzburg heard opening remarks in the case, and the trial highlighted few basic legal questions, such as who is responsible for the content linking him to terrorism. The German Justice Minister Heiko Maas is looking at the details and connecting scenarios like who is in charge of defamation. Modamani claimed that he wants his life back and he screamed that Facebook's online reporting system did not handle the problem.
Maas also suggested that the government should take actions to fake news, which is currently growing and directly flagged as "hateful" and racism. The government-initiated task forces are still looking for ways to stop spreading the fake news on the social media sites, such as Fakebook, Google, and Twitter. The German panels are expected to report their findings in the coming months.
Authorities in Germany requested to remove hate speech on Facebook within 24 hours, as The Verge reported. The social giant agreed and took the move by launching a filtering system in both France and Germany, however, the German lawmakers are trying to seek proposal if Facebook would be fined for every false story the social media fails to remove.
In 2015, there are over 1.1 million refugees photos used in random posting after the Dec. 19 terror attack in Berlin which killed 12 and 50 were injured. The selfie was seen over 200,000 times before Facebook removed it.