The 13th civil senate of the Oldenburg Higher Regional Court has now obliged Facebook in summary proceedings to reinstate a post that was originally deleted. The right to freedom of expression would otherwise be restricted to an inadmissible extent, the judges said.
The complaining Facebook user had criticised a member of the Central Council of Muslims on his account and called it cowardly that he had deleted certain information from the network. The background was that the member of the Central Council had made negative comments about a critic of Islam.
Facebook deleted the plaintiff's criticism. The allegations made were untrue and insulting. It was "hate speech".
According to the Network Enforcement Act, internet platforms such as Facebook must delete illegal comments. "Hate speech" should not be allowed to remain on the net. Facebook's terms and conditions also prohibit "hate speech". However, it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether a comment is illegal or not.
The Regional Court dismissed the plaintiff's application to oblige Facebook to reinstate the post. The plaintiff appealed against this to the Oldenburg Higher Regional Court. After proving the facts he alleged, the plaintiff was successful. Neither the presentation of correct facts nor the assessment of an act as cowardly was unlawful. The evaluation was a permissible expression of opinion.
When applying its terms and conditions, Facebook also had to weigh up in each individual case whether the right of personality of a person was more important than the protection of the freedom of expression of another person. In the present case, the borderline to "hate speech" had not yet been crossed. According to the senate, the matter was also urgent, so that a decision had to be taken by way of an interim injunction. Otherwise, the plaintiff would run the risk of Facebook deleting another similar post and thus depriving the plaintiff of the opportunity to freely express his opinion.
Oldenburg Higher Regional Court, Case No. 13 W 16/19, Judgment of 1 July 2019
Source: Press release of the OLG Oldenburg
