Munich (dpa/lby) - According to Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich (CSU), a Bavaria-wide initiative to combat hateful posts, for example in the comment columns of online media, has been very successful. Media professionals had submitted 538 requests for verification this year by mid-July alone, and 93 charges and penal order applications as well as 84 convictions with fines or suspended sentences went back to the "Justice and Media - Consistently Against Hatred" initiative. So that there will be even more in the future, the use of artificial intelligence will also be tested, as those responsible announced on Friday in Munich.
The idea behind the initiative: If perpetrators had nothing to fear apart from the deletion of their hateful, insulting or inflammatory comments, hate speech would not be contained. Journalists and other media professionals can therefore use a simple online form to forward hate postings directly to the Bavarian judiciary according to the motto "report first, then delete". "We were able to identify the originator of around 90 percent of the reported hate mail," explained Eisenreich. "Anyone who sells illegal content online will be consistently prosecuted in Bavaria."
The initiative of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice and the Bavarian State Center for New Media (BLM) has been around for around three years. "Neither reporting nor the free formation of opinions should be restricted by hate and hate speech," said BLM President Thorsten Schmiege.
For this reason, the use of artificial intelligence has also been tested since the beginning of the year: A software program, a so-called crawler, automatically searches the network and analyzes content. If it identifies cases of hate speech, these are sent as verification requests to the Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism (ZET) at the Munich Public Prosecutor's Office.
