A court in Germany this week ruled against a Syrian refugee who filed a lawsuit against Facebook after a photo of himself with Chancellor Angela Merkel was used in false news posts linking him to terrorism.

The refugee, Anas Modamani, was seeking a temporary injunction against Facebook that would have forced the company to prevent the photo from being shared by users in Germany. But in a preliminary ruling handed down Tuesday, the Wuerzburg district court said that Facebook was neither a “perpetrator nor a participant” in the “undisputable defamation” carried out by its users, Reuters reports. The court also said that as a hosting provider, Facebook was not responsible for preemptively removing offensive content, citing European…

Continue reading…