Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports

Heldt, Amélie Article Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review Provided in Cooperation with: Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), Berlin Suggested Citation: Heldt, Amélie (2019) : Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports, Internet Policy Review, ISSN 2197-6775, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, Vol. 8, Iss. 2, pp. 1-18, https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.2.1398 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/214071 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/legalcode INTERNET POLICY REVIEW Journal on internet regulation Volume 8 | Issue 2 Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 1 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Amélie Heldt Leibniz Institut für Medienforschung, Hans-Bredow-Institut, Hamburg, Germany Published on 12 Jun 2019 | DOI: 10.14763/2019.2.1398 Abstract: Approaches to regulating social media platforms and the way they moderate content has been an ongoing debate within legal and social scholarship for some time now. European policy makers have been asking for faster and more effective responses from the various social media platforms to explain how they might deal with the dissemination of hate speech and disinformation. After a failed attempt to push social media platforms to self-regulate, Germany adopted a law called the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) which forces platforms to ensure that “obviously unlawful content” is deleted within 24 hours. It contains an obligation that all platforms that receive more than 100 complaints per calendar year about unlawful content must publish bi-annual reports on their activities. This provision is designed to provide clarification on the way content is moderated and complaints handled on social networks. After the NetzDG came into force, initial reports reveal the law’s weak points, predominantly in reference to their low informative value. When it comes to important takeaways regarding new regulation against hate speech and more channelled content moderation, the reports do not live up to the expectations of German lawmakers. This paper analyses the legislative reasoning behind the reporting obligation, the main outcomes of the reports from the major social networks (Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter) and why the reports are unsuitable to serve as grounds for further development of the NetzDG or any similar regulation. Keywords: NetzDG, Speech regulation, Social media, Transparency, Content moderation Article information Received: 29 Aug 2018 Reviewed: 31 May 2019 Published: 12 Jun 2019 Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist that have influenced the text. URL: http://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/reading-between-lines-and-numbers-analysis-first-netzdg-re ports Citation: Heldt, A. (2019). Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports. Internet Policy Review , 8 (2). DOI: 10.14763/2019.2.1398 Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 2 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 INTRODUCTION Good content, bad content? What seems reasonable to some might be offensive to others. Depending on our social norms, laws and culture, we tend to categorise what we see on the internet as a process of content selection that fits our expectations and our needs or not (Gillespie, 2018, p. 197). This plays into our perceptions of the content disseminated by users on social media platforms and these inherent discrepancies constitute a reason why regulating online speech is still an unresolved issue for lawmakers. In the legislative process one pervading question remains: how to improve content moderation in the light of long established legal provisions. The minimum European lawmakers tend to agree upon is the legitimacy of the need to take down unlawful content. At the very least, this is what the German government assumed when it issued a law that made it mandatory for the largest social media platforms to ban obviously unlawful content within 24 hours. In doing so, Germany was one of the first countries to issue a so-called anti-“hate speech” law and it has been the target of fairly constant criticism since it was instated. Not only do critics label it as unconstitutional (Gersdorf, 2017; Schulz, 2018), but it is also mentioned in the international discussion as a bad example of platform regulation (Special Rapporteur for the UN: Kaye, 2018). The NetzDG was meant to enhance the protection of users against hate speech and to provide more clarity on the way platforms handle and moderate unlawful content (Wischmeyer, 2018, p. 7). However, as this paper will show, so far there is still no certainty about either of these goals mainly because the reports do not provide well defined results. Many have expected the published reports to provide more substantial insights on content moderation policies – an expectation that seems to have been betrayed (Gollatz et al., 2018). The main aim of this article is to provide an analysis of the reports published by the major social media platforms, including insights into the implementation of the NetzDG while focusing on the obligation of ensuring user-friendly complaint procedures. The result of this analysis shows that it is not enough to require companies to publish transparency reports if the information they contain has no real informative value. This article shows that the law might have incentivised the platforms to remove hate speech faster, but that there is no certainty about its effect due to the lack of substantial information in the reports. Facebook for example does not fully comply with the obligation of supplying an easily recognisable complaint procedure, therefore the number of complaints cannot be considered conclusive. After introducing the NetzDG in general, and the reasons why it is deemed unconstitutional in the German debate, the present article dives deeper into the rationale of the NetzDG. This law can serve as an example of “new-school speech regulation”, that is, a type of regulation that is aimed at the owners of the digital infrastructure instead of the speakers themselves (Balkin, 2014, p. 2298). Starting from the published complaint figures, this article examines the implementation of complaint tools and eventually goes to show that the reports constitute no factual ground for a re-evaluation of the NetzDG or for a similar regulatory project, even though the reporting obligation is a key provision. The law leaves room for interpretation with regards to its implementation and this has somehow hollowed out the obligation to publish transparency reports as the figures do not reflect the full picture. The reporting obligation under NetzDG might however serve as a counterexample in the discussion on transparency and the corresponding reports. It shows that we need to formulate transparency rules in a clearer way so that the data collected can serve the purpose of iteration for both the companies and the state. Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 3 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 1. THE NETZDG: AN ACT TO IMPROVE LAW ENFORCEMENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS 1.1. THE REGULATORY RATIONALE OF THE NETZDG A series of events involving online discrimination against and agitation towards ethnic minorities (that reached a peak in 2015-2016 when a wave of refugees from Syria arrived in Germany) triggered the German government in acting against hateful online content. There are other factors that could also be interpreted as catalysts that caused the government to act: an increasing awareness of the problem of aggressive and potentially harmful online communication and an air of mistrust of the tech companies that run the biggest social media platforms. .The latter especially applies to their governance through content moderation policies (Citron, 2017, p. 1065 f.). In order to combat hate speech and other unwanted content on social networks (cf. Delort et al., 2011, p. 9), the German government drafted a law that would force social networks to examine complaints and delete content if possible within 24 hours of receiving user complaints. The main motive for the legislator’s action was to thwart the increase of hate speech on social networks (as stated in the law’s explanatory memorandum) and to respond to public pressure surrounding the issue (Liesching, 2018c, para. 2). After several failed attempts to implement a system of self-regulation by the social network companies to reduce the proliferation of hate speech, the German Ministry of Justice drafted the NetzDG and it was finally ratified by Parliament in July 2017. The EU, for instance, began a self-regulatory initiative with the 2016 EU Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online in cooperation with Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube (its fourth evaluation was published in February 2019). The “Act to Improve Enforcement of the Law in Social Networks” (Network Enforcement Act, hereinafter NetzDG) became fully effective on 1 January 2018. It aims for the faster enforcement of German criminal laws, hence the deletion – when appropriate – of unlawful content. The law defines social networks as follows: “telemedia service providers which, for profit-making purposes, operate internet platforms which are designed to enable users to share any content with other users or to make such content available to the public” (official translation by German Ministry of Justice). Hate speech as such is – on the contrary – neither defined by the NetzDG nor by the German Penal Code (hereinafter StGB), although the general discussion around the legislative project mostly refers to the term. The general definition of hate speech is: speech designed to promote hatred on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin or other specific group characteristics (Rosenfeld, 2002, p. 1523; Djuric et al., 2015). The NetzDG refers to StGB sections without defining the offences listed. In the StGB these offences are not listed under one specific title but in different categories, for example, breaches of public order or libel. This creates a chain of provisions that refer to one another (see below). The offences targeted by the NetzDG can be conflated as hate speech when discussing the type of offences, but it is not actually a technical term under German law. Although scholars agree on a general definition of hate speech, its criminal prosecution differs from one country to another (even within member states of the European Union). It is important to note, therefore, that no new criminal offences for online hate speech were created or added to the StGB. Instead, the NetzDG lists 22 offences that were already and still are punishable under the StGB, such as libel, defamation, sedition and calls for violence and adds a de facto enforcement obligation for large social media platforms. Anyone breaching these laws by posting, commenting or uploading content on social media platforms stills incurs a penalty Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 4 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 from the state. In addition, German law now forces social networks to become more active. They are obliged to implement procedures that ensure obviously unlawful content is deleted within 24 hours of receiving a complaint. If there is any doubt regarding a takedown decision, the procedure may take up to seven days. After that deadline, a final decision on the lawfulness of a post must be reached and unlawful content needs to be removed, that is, either blocked or deleted. The fines for a breach of this obligation can reach up to €50 million. In addition to complying with this operational provision, social media platforms are obliged to publish biannual reports which will be addressed and analysed below. 1.2. MAIN ALLEGATIONS REGARDING THE VIOLATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW In order to fully assimilate the importance of the published reports, it is helpful to know more about the context of the NetzDG. This law has been under attack ever since its first draft was made public. Not only was it perceived as an ad hoc legislative reaction, more importantly it is considered merely as a loophole that transfers public responsibility to a private actor. It has been criticised from many perspectives and an exhaustive description would go beyond the scope of this article (cf. Schulz, 2018, passim). However, a brief overview is necessary to comprehend the context in which the first NetzDG reports were published. To state it briefly, a wide array of scholars, politicians and activists demanded the abrogation of the NetzDG or a revised version in the near future. Liberal politicians have opposed the law in court and there have been counter-proposals (e.g., the Green Party’s proposal from January 2019). The criticism did not diminish over the course of 2018 although the consequences for free speech were not as severe as expected, instead the numbers below show that the NetzDG did not really have an impact on content moderation. Nonetheless, a law has no legitimation to stay in effect if it is deemed unconstitutional, which is why it is still expected to be revised. The following passage will give a general overview of the allegations made against the NetzDG. The procedural points of criticism will be omitted because they are more technical and inherent to the German legal system and add little to the present argument. Others are related to human rights infringements and partly transferrable to similar law projects in other jurisdictions (cf. Funke, 2018) and are, therefore, more relevant to this paper. 1 The main focus of the (non-procedural) criticism relates to possible violations of freedom of speech in various ways. The de facto obligation for social networks to delete manifestly unlawful content within 24 hours has raised questions pertaining to the potential overblocking of content and to the privatisation of the judiciary due to the interpretation and application of criminal law by private companies. These two elements combined can in turn have chilling effects on freedom of speech and we will take a closer look at them below. First, however, one must bear in mind that the question of whether the content targeted by NetzDG may be deleted is not my main concern. First, because such content is illegal and second, because takedown is still the most effective tool social media platforms make use of when it comes to hate speech (Citron & Norton, 2011, p. 1468; Klonick, 2018, p. 12). The main source of scepticism is the shift of responsibility towards private companies as a corollary of the obligations that have been laid upon them (Guggenberger, 2017b, p. 2582). In sum, scholars agree that the NetzDG is not really an exemplar of methods for fighting hate speech online (Gersdorf, 2017, p. 447; Guggenberger, 2017a, p. 101; Balkin, 2018, p. 28). The German Basic Law allows lawmakers to restrict fundamental rights under certain conditions and freedom of speech may be constrained by general laws according to art. 5 (2) Basic Law. This includes criminalising offensive speech and it can have a horizontal effect between private parties when private actors require one another to observe the law. This is Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 5 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 acceptable as long as it does not result in overblocking. Overblocking is the term used when content is deleted or blocked for no substantial reason, because the incentive to immediately delete rather than perform more fundamental checks arises (Richter, 2017; Holznagel, 2018, p. 369). Criminal offences related to the protection of honour (such as libel) mostly overlap with the categories used by social networks in their “community guidelines”. However, this overlap is not preserved when it comes to the specific elements of a criminal offence. One would need to know and practice (national) criminal law and consider the context of the generated content (Wimmers & Heymann, 2017, p. 100). These various parameters make it difficult to parse unlawful content in a short timeframe and that is what the social media platforms have been insisting upon in recent years when justifying the slow removal of hate speech. The problem lies in the risk that there is just not enough time to make accurate takedown decisions coupled with the high level of pressure of being fined. In this scenario, the net result could potentially be overblocking (Kaye, 2018, p. 7). In accordance with section 3 (2) NetzDG, social networks must provide a procedure that ensures the deletion of obviously unlawful content within 24 hours after a user complaint. If they fail to do so, as mentioned earlier, they risk a fine of up to €50 million, which makes the incentive for decisions in favour of takedowns stronger than before the implementation of the NetzDG (Schiff, 2018, p. 370). However, the fear of overblocking doesn't seem to have materialised when looking at the takedown numbers in the reports published by the companies concerned by the NetzDG (Wieschmeyer, 2018, p. 20). However, the critique of a substantial shift of responsibility from the judiciary to platforms themselves is still under discussion. This is mainly due to the wording of sec. 3 (2) Nr. 2 NetzDG, that is, to delete “content that is manifestly unlawful”. Generally, content-related regulation has to be as neutral as possible with regards to the opinions expressed, i.e., it is subject to a strict proportionality test (so-called “Wechselwirkung”). The scope of application of a content targeting law must be sufficiently precise to avoid too much room for interpretation, which could, in the case of the NetzDG, result in an overly broad definition of legal terms and an unsubstantial removal of content. Using an unspecified legal term such as “manifestly”, although the law is applied by a private party and not by a judge, puts the power of the judiciary in its interpretation and the application of the law at risk. Clear legal definitions and specific criteria are necessary to constrain the platforms’ discretion (Nolte, 2017, p. 556-558; Liesching, 2018a, p. 27; Wieschmeyer, 2018, p. 15-16; Belli, Francisco, & Zingales, 2017, p. 52; Nunziato, 2014, p. 10); leaving the interpretation of a key term of the bill too unspecified is considered as unconstitutional (FCC: BVerfGE 47, 109, 121; Wimmers & Heymann, 2017, p. 97-98; Reuter, 2018, p. 86) because this kind of interpretation is actually a core function of the judiciary. Unspecified legal terms are usually only filled with meaning by court rulings. Up until then, they can be loaded with interpretations which might be revised later. In order to decide whether a statement is still within the boundaries of the law and therefore still protected by freedom of speech, a judge will have to examine the requirements mentioned above and potentially balance the fundamental rights of both parties. The result can then later subsequently be applied by private parties as a standard or a guideline. What is “manifestly” illegal? The NetzDG’s explanatory memorandum defines it as follows: “Content is manifestly unlawful if no in-depth examination is necessary to establish the unlawfulness within the meaning of sec. 1 (3).” This sentence does not explain from which starting point an examination is considered “in depth”, it leaves the original question of how to define “manifestly” unanswered. Still, users’ right to take the platforms’ decisions to court remains intact when social networks delete user-generated content under NetzDG. This possibility makes it unlikely that the NetzDG will be abrogated on the grounds of the ‘privatisation’ argument. Nevertheless, the complexity of this assignment, deciding whether content is unwanted but perhaps not unlawful, is a core element of the public Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 6 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 debate around content moderation (Kaye, 2018, p. 4). Because of the important implications for users’ freedom of speech, one cannot help but wonder about the fact that the German lawmakers delegated this task to social media platforms instead of enhancing their own law enforcement forces (Schmitz & Berndt, 2018, p. 7; Wieschmeyer, 2018, p. 15-16; Buermeyer, 2017). 1.3. THE OBLIGATION TO IMPLEMENT A COMPLAINT PROCEDURE All in all, German lawmakers were aiming for a faster response from social networks as to when content is reported as unlawful. It resulted in the obligation to ensure a procedure that would guarantee a reaction on “manifestly unlawful content” within 24 hours after receipt of the complaint. As mentioned above, this provision is one of the most criticised because of the uncertain effects it could possibly have on free speech (Keller, 2018, p. 2). This topic is rightly at the centre of the debate because scholars are only beginning to know more about the effects of these rules on the behaviour of both the platforms and the users (Gollatz et al., 2018). However, this paper focuses more on the way social networks have implemented the obligation to ensure a complaint procedure. This will later contribute to measure the informational value of the reports (see infra, section 4). According to sec. 3 (1) NetzDG, social networks have “to supply users with an easily recognisable, directly accessible and permanently available procedure for submitting complaints about unlawful content.” The implementation of this obligation is decisive for the relevance of the reports when it comes to conducting meaningful evaluation and regulatory impact assessments. I evaluated the significance of the reports in view of the accessibility of the complaint tool for users and their comparativeness. As mentioned above, the number of complaints filed could be of significance as far as the regulatory goals are concerned if the manner in which the data was collected and presented in the reports was different, or on the other hand, if the provision was identically implemented, regardless of the company carrying out their legal obligations. One needs to bear in mind (again) the explanatory memorandum of the NetzDG which states that social networks have to provide a “user-friendly procedure for submitting complaints about unlawful content”. Furthermore, the procedure must be “easily recognisable, immediately accessible and always available”. The memorandum does not provide any further expectations or provisions concerning the implementation of the complaint tool. The second half of the memorandum’s section on the complaint procedure contains the requirements for the way that complaints are handled once submitted by a user. It does not elaborate any further on the way social networks should design the complaint procedure as such, leaving the concrete implementation of complaint procedures, for the most part, at the platform’s discretion. This aspect was probably not expected to be as decisive as it appears to be now that the reports show that at least one platform violates this provision. The criteria mentioned above regarding expectations of the “user-friendly procedure” shall therefore be at the centre of the remarks below when it comes to the informative value of the reports. 2. THE NETZDG REPORTING OBLIGATION In order to gain a better understanding of the way social networks moderate user-generated content and how they decide whether or not to remove content, the German lawmakers included a biannual reporting obligation. According to section 2 NetzDG: Providers of social networks which receive more than 100 complaints per calendar year about unlawful content shall be obliged to produce half-yearly German-language Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 7 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 reports on the handling of complaints about unlawful content on their platforms, covering the points enumerated in subsection (2), and shall be obliged to publish these reports in the Federal Gazette and on their own website no later than one month after the half-year concerned has ended. The reports published on their own website shall be easily recognisable, directly accessible and permanently available.2 The NetzDG’s explanatory memorandum states that the reporting obligation is required “in order to create the necessary transparency for the general public”, 3 a requirement that was similarly formulated a while ago by scholars and activists (Gillespie, 2018, p. 199). The secondary goal of the reporting obligation is to provide numbers and facts “necessary in the interest of an effective impact assessment”. The German Parliament is currently discussing a revision of the law subsequent to proposals that range from a complete abrogation of the law to only light adaptations. Changes made to the NetzDG will be based, at least partly, on the reports. The whole NetzDG project also serves as an example (for better or worse) for similar legislative undertakings. These reports are, therefore, central to a better development of the legislative tool, not only at national level, but also to answer the challenge posed by content moderation in general. As mentioned above, the German approach was quite a push forward due to political circumstances and public pressure. There is so far no equivalent in other jurisdictions and no solutions considered standard nor has best practice been established across borders because, when it comes to balancing content moderation and freedom of expression, the issues that arise are too numerous and too varied. Hate speech, fake news, copyright infringements – just to name a few of the issues that arise – are often confused in the public debate and their respective definitions differ from one country to another. Considering the fact that social media platforms act globally, a one-size-fits-all solution would reduce costs. At the same time, such an extensive approach could be a threat to freedom of expression because of scopes of application that are too broad, leading to more restrictive regimes. To design a new regulatory framework, it is, therefore, necessary to monitor the effectiveness of its application. On that account, implementing a reporting obligation in sec. 2 NetzDG was necessary to improve this type of regulation (Eifert, 2017, p. 1453). The memorandum also states that producing the reports shall “ensure a meaningful and comprehensive picture of how they [the social networks] deal with complaints”. As sec. 2 (2) NetzDG determines the minimum requirements for the reports, the memorandum justifies the reporting obligation with the special role of social networks. They are “crucial to the public debate” and must take on their “increased social responsibility”. Rather than providing numbers without context, the reports are supposed to help understand the connection between the grounds on which social networks delete or block unlawful content and the provisions provided by law. Unfortunately, this expectation was not fulfilled. The minimum requirements for the reports include specific points under sec. 2 NetzDG, such as providing the “number of incoming complaints about unlawful content” (nr. 3), the “number of complaints for which an external body was consulted” (nr. 6) and the “number of complaints in the reporting period that resulted in the deletion or blocking of the content at issue” (nr. 7). The numbers listed in nr. 7 need to be broken down according to the reasons for the specific complaint which makes them particularly interesting with regards to the regulatory goal. The explanatory memorandum of the NetzDG is quite brief on that point: it merely mentions “the interests of transparency and the effectiveness of the complaint management” as the reason for that specific point and then refers to the comments on sec. 3 NetzDG (“Handling of complaints about unlawful content”). This part nevertheless reveals the tight connection between the Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 8 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 reports and the handling of complaints. As a result, the obligation to report mainly serves to enhance transparency which goes hand in hand with an effective impact assessment of the new law, as stated in the memorandum, and the long-term goal of developing this regulatory framework in a sensible manner. These goals are important characteristics for the evaluation of the published reports. It will become clear at a later point in this article that they were perhaps underrated and minimised by the platforms – as propositioned by the title. 3. MAIN RESULTS OF THE FIRST ROUND OF REPORTS According to sec. 1 (1) NetzDG, only social networks that have more than two million users have to comply with its rules and, therefore, with the reporting obligation in sec. 2. In view of the user numbers on the largest social networks, the minimum of 100 complaints per calendar year (as an obligation for having to publish reports) was easily arrived at by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Their reports demonstrate many similarities in the way they handle the matter of content moderation, but they also feature notable differences as far as the numbers of complaints are concerned. 4 The three reports from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were analysed for this article not long after their publication, in August 2018. The overall result, as will be explained below, is that provisions for these types of reports need to be precise if one wishes to gather meaningful data. In substance, the reports show that social media platforms tend to moderate content on the grounds of their own community guidelines more than on the basis of national criminal law. I presume that the reason for this is that it allows them to react on a global scale rather than on a national one. Furthermore, social media platforms tend to use terms and tonalities in their community guidelines that are very similar to the vocabulary used in the NetzDG, making it rather unclear to the user where the differences lie (cf. Celeste, 2018). This similarity between reports being stated, the divergence between the complaint figures is quite significant. 3.1. COMMUNITY GUIDELINES ARE PRIORITISED As the reports show, the content review process is based on a two-step approach for all three platforms. After being notified of a user complaint, the first check is made on the grounds of community guidelines or standards (both terms being used synonymously hereinafter). If the content violates these internal rules the reviewer will take the content down. Only if the result of that review is negative and if the user also submitted a complaint under NetzDG provisions (not only community guidelines), the content will be further checked for NetzDG infringements. It remains unclear how much content was taken down as hate speech under community guidelines, which could also have been blocked because of a violation of German criminal law. To submit a complaint under the NetzDG, the user will either have to tick an additional NetzDG box in the case of YouTube and Twitter, or, in the case of Facebook, go to the “Help Centre” and follow a specific NetzDG complaint link. In the next subsection, I will take a closer look at how each platform implemented the NetzDG complaint procedure and the subsequent effects on their complaint numbers. The reports do not state whether complaints have been examined on NetzDG violations even if they were not flagged as such by users. Nevertheless, it appears that YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all prioritise their own community guidelines since none of them offers to immediately submit a complaint under NetzDG (which is not mandatory under sec. 3 (2) NetzDG). A reason for this prioritisation could be the subsequent takedown options. So-called unwanted content, that is, content that violates community guidelines, will be deleted globally whereas Reading between the lines and the numbers: an analysis of the first NetzDG reports Internet Policy Review | http://policyreview.info 15 June 2019 | Volume 8 | Issue 2 REFERENCES Balkin, J. M. (2018). Free Speech is a Triangle. Columbia Law Review, 118(7), 2011-2056. 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The German Act on Improving Law Enforcement on Social Networks (NetzDG): A Blunt Sword? Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=3306964 Wimmers, J., & Heymann, B. (2017). Zum Referentenentwurf eines Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetzes (NetzDG) - eine kritische Stellungnahme. AfP - Zeitschrift für das gesamte Medienrecht, 48(2), 93-102. doi:10.9785/afp-2017-0202 Wischmeyer, T. (2018). ‘What is Illegal Offline is Also Illegal Online’ – The German Network Enforcement Act 2017. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3256498 YouTube (2017, December 4). Expanding our work against abuse of our platform. Retrieved from https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/12/expanding-our-work-against-abuse-of-our.html FOOTNOTES 1. The NetzDG itself might not be flawless but in some way, it can serve as an experiment for other lawmakers. 2. NetzDG quotes are from the official translation by the German Ministry of Justice. 3. Loose translation of the NetzDG explanatory memorandum, retrieved from https://dipbt.bundestag.de/doc/btd/18/123/1812356.pdf, last accessed 13 May 2019. 4. This paper does not examine the case of the social network Google+ explicitly, but its report shows that the legal requirements according to NetzDG were implemented in the same manner as for YouTube. The platform Change.org is also within the scope of application but was not examined here for the purpose of focusing on the biggest platforms.