Facebook to open new "deletion center" in Germany

Facebook will significantly increase its head count for German staff tasked with removing online content in breach of a new hate speech law, the U.S. social network announced on Wednesday.

A new "deletion center" with 500 employees would be opened in the city of Essen in the fall. Additionally, the number of staff working at Facebook's Berlin office will be raised to 700.

Rather than recruiting internally, Facebook is sub-contracting the activities to European service providers Arvato and Competence Call Center.

In July, the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) passed the Network Enforcement Act, commonly referred to as the "Facebook law" which would see network operators, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, face fines of up 50 million euros (58.53 million U.S. dollars) if they failed to promptly delete content which breached hate speech laws.

Under Germany's prevailing legal framework, hate speech includes the incitement to kill or be violent, threatening speech, abusive language and sedition.

According to the new legislation, network operators are obliged to offer users an easily-recognizable and immediately responsive process to lodge complaints about such offenses. Network operators must delete criminal content within 24 hours of receiving complaints, although the window for action is extended to seven days in ambiguous cases.

The bill caused heavy controversy in the run up to its passing, with a diverse range of social media operators and civil rights and interest groups warning about its purported negative implications.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had complained that he wanted to see a unified European resolution to the issue rather than 27 national approaches, calling the German law "inappropriate."

Civil rights groups have also raised concerns that the law might curtail freedom of expression as social media operators would be more inclined to delete ambiguous content out of fear of fines.

Facebook has declared its intention to increase the number of people it employs internationally to monitor and delete content on the social network from 4,500 to 7,500.