Court case 2-03 O 48/19 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

The defendant blocked the plaintiff's contribution on 25.12.2018 (p. 776 of the annex) with the statement that his contribution did not comply with the F-Community standards. The plaintiff filed an appeal against the decision and tried to persuade the defendant to lift the block. On 27.12.2018 the defendant reactivated the contribution - after a re-evaluation of the disputed mail - with the following words: "We are sorry that we misunderstood this. We have re-examined your contribution and confirmed that it meets our Community standards...". However, the blocking of the plaintiff's profile continued. The plaintiff asks whether the defendant's terms of use for deleting so-called hate messages are invalid. Furthermore, it is questioned whether the Community standards of spring 2018 had become part of the contract. In this respect, the defendant might rely on the amendment clause in clause 13 of the previous terms and conditions, as it violates § 307 (1) sentence 1 BGB or § 308 no. 5 BGB if the forced consent to the amendment of the terms of use was immoral. The court held that if the operator of a social network deletes a contribution and blocks the user, but restores the contribution in response to the user's complaint, the risk of recurrence is not immediately absent. The operator cannot invoke a "free shot". Instead, the principles developed in the case law on rectification are to be applied to such a constellation. If the operator restores the contribution in response to the complaint, it must provide sufficiently serious evidence that its (unlawful) conduct will not be repeated. This is not sufficient if the user's block is not also lifted. It could remain open here whether in such a case the operator is at all entitled to block the user immediately after deletion of the contribution.