Can social media become less hateful by law?

Berlin

WHEN 32-year-old German teacher and academic book author Bahar Aslan took to Twitter last week to accuse authorities of not doing enough to investigate an alleged xenophobic murder potentially committed by police officers, she hardly assumed that in doing so she would soon be accused of having broken the law, too. After all, freedom of speech is enshrined in the German Constitution.

But her tweet soon disappeared, and Aslan says Twitter later messaged her saying she had violated Germany's hate crime law.