Facebook faces lawsuit over alleged hate posts in Germany

New York, Nov 5: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and two other top executives are now part of a German investigation over alleged hate postings, a media report said.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and its European policy director, Richard Allan, are also under investigation, according to German newspaper Der Spiegel.

"All three have been accused by Chan-jo Jun, a Bavarian lawyer, of failing to ensure posts on Facebook containing racist abuse, threats of violence and Holocaust denial are removed," telegraph.co.uk reported on Friday.

Jun filed a complaint in the Munich prosecutors office saying that he has listed 430 offensive Facebook posts which were reported to the company but never deleted.

Under German law, Facebook is legally obliged to remove racist or Nazi-themed content as soon as it becomes aware of it.

On the allegations, Facebook said that neither the company nor its employees had broken any German law. 

"The country's government has already threatened to hit social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter with hefty fines if they fail to delete racist content," the report added.