Man 'paints' offensive tweets outside Twitter's Hamburg office

A German satirist who claims Twitter is failing to delete hate speech has captured the micro-blogging website's attention offline -- by stencilling offending messages outside its Hamburg office.

A YouTube video has emerged showing the man stencilling 30 tweets, which include statements that are homophobic, xenophobic and involve holocaust denial.

The Jewish man, Shahak Shapira, claimed that Twitter had responded to just nine of his 300 complaints in six months, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

"If Twitter forces me to see these things, then they'll have to see them too," said Shapira in the video titled "#HeyTwitter".

The nine responses he got from Twitter said the tweets did not violate the site's rules.

He described the comments as "not just plain insults or jokes, but absolutely serious threats of violence".

"Germany needs a final solution to Islam," read one of the tweets.

"Let's gas the Jews," says another, in reference to the Nazis' murder of six million Jews during World War Two.

Shapira applauded Facebook which, in contrast, removed 80 per cent of the comments he had reported during the same six-month period.

"Hate speech is an especially sensitive subject in Germany due to the crimes committed by the Nazi regime in the World War II," the report added.

In June, the country passed a law which could force social media companies to delete racist or slanderous posts within 24 hours or face a fine of up to 50 million euros ($58 million).

Reacting to the incident, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas who spearheaded the law wrote on Twitter that the social network deletes only one per cent of hate crimes reported by its users which is not enough.

--IANS

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