Facebook’s excuse is that they only make available stuff that other people upload. They like to see themselves as a “common carrier”, similar to the post office, which also transports letters without caring about or accepting responsibility for their content.
Whether that really flies in view of the fact that in the end it is Facebook, rather than the people who upload stuff, that decides who gets to see what and when, is a question that to my knowledge has never been tested in a court of law.
Now, the problem with the German hate-speech law is that whether some specific stuff that somebody has uploaded is “illegal” in some jurisdiction and should not be displayed to people (in that jurisdiction or anywhere) is something that Facebook can’t be expected to be able to decide in all cases. In some it may be patently obvious, but in others, actual courts of law spend considerable time and effort (and indeed the time and effort of people who have devoted their lives to becoming experts on the matter) figuring out what is what – and Facebook is supposed to do it in 48 hours or risk a huge fine? What could possibly go wrong.
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