Open letter to Mark Zuckerberg – Congratulations on your remarks – And now let Correctiv know, “You’re fired!”
Media lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel fought for freedom of expression on Facebook. Now he welcomes Zuckerberg’s move to abolish fact-checkers on Meta. An open letter.
This is an open letter from media lawyer Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel to Mark Zuckerberg. Read the open letter in German here.
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg! I would like to congratulate you on your remarks of January 7, 2025. Your announcements are of eminent relevance for freedom of speech on social media platforms and given the paramount importance of this form of communication for freedom of expression as a whole. You have announced a number of important measures and changes which I welcome. Your company and I have had and still have a very close relationship since at least 2018. In German courts. I have sued Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. well over 100 times on behalf of private users, the media and myself. In 2018, I obtained the first injunction ever issued against an unauthorized deletion by Facebook. I have also obtained a whole series of legally enforceable bans due to the unlawful fact checks published on Facebook (of dpa or, mostly, “Correctiv”). Meta Platforms lost more than 90% of these lawsuits. In May 2024, I published the non-fiction book “Die digitale Bevormundung” (“The digital paternalism”), which reached number 1 on the bestseller lists and was one of the best-selling non-fiction books of 2024 in Germany. The book deals with the fight in court for the enforcement of freedom of expression against social media. Facebook and Instagram play an important role here, but also X (Twitter) and Google/YouTube. For example: X lost a case that challenged the blocking of the well-known New York Post article about Hunter Biden's notebook close to the 2020 general election in the United States. X lost the appeal as well. YouTube has deleted an excerpt from a series that was broadcast on public television and whose protagonists were awarded a German Television Prize.
The reason I mention this is to point out that I have a professional connection to these issues. A few examples of how Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. dealt with the constitutional and contractual rights of its German users in court. As the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” wrote on September 13, 2018: “However, if a comment is not only deleted, but this deletion is upheld following the user’s complaint and defended in the subsequent court proceedings by a major international law firm in detailed pleadings, then you are probably not doing anyone an injustice if you declare the deletion to be part of the officially pursued corporate policy - and draw your conclusions from this.” This is true.
