The new law called The Network Enforcement Act, which came into force on January 1, requires platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to remove hate speech and other illegal content, or risk fines of up to 50 million euros.
Germany’s justice minister, Heiko Maas, has became the first victim to the rules. One of Maas’ the tweets dated back to 2010 was deleted by Twitter when Heiko Maas was not yet a minister.
HE HAD CALLED A POLITICIAN “AN IDIOT”
In the post, he had called Thilo Sarrazin, a politician who wrote a controversial book on Muslim immigrants, “an idiot”.
“THERE ARE THINGS THAT I WOULD NO LONGER TWEET TODAY”
Maas told that he did not receive any information from Twitter about why the tweet was deleted, or whether it would be deleted from Twitter. He added that “There are things that I would no longer tweet today. I’ve learnt that over the years.”