German minister says Facebook should be treated as a media company

Pushing for a stance: Maas has said the EU needs to decide whether platform companies should be treated like radio or television stations.

BERLIN: Germany's Justice Minister says he believes Facebook Inc. should be treated like a media company rather than a technology platform, suggesting he favours moves to make social media groups criminally liable for failing to remove hate speech.

Under a programme that runs until March, German authorities are monitoring how many racist posts reported by Facebook users are deleted within 24 hours. Justice Minister Heiko Maas has pledged to take legislative measures if the results are still unsatisfactory by then.