The Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), applicable since 2017, is an important component in combating hate crime on the Internet. The approach taken by Act to provide social networks with a user-friendly process for fulfilling their responsibility to remove known punishable content has resulted in a significant number of this punishable content being deleted by the providers following their review. In addition to deletion, however, it is necessary to ensure that punishable content is also subject to effective criminal prosecution. Nonetheless, law enforcement authorities are often not aware of the punishable content deleted in response to a complaint in accordance with the Network Enforcement Act, so that the posting of such content has no criminal consequences and thus increases the impression that the Internet is developing into a legal vacuum. Therefore, social network providers subject to the Network Enforcement Act must be obligated to report content they have become aware of following a user complaint and which they determine as punishable to the Federal Criminal Police Office so that criminal prosecution can be initiated from there by the competent law enforcement agencies.

In addition to tightening national criminal law, the compliance obligations for social network providers in the German Network Enforcement Act [Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz – NetzDG] are being expanded for more effective criminal prosecution of hate crime. The providers are to forward content reported to them as punishable in the context of user complaints and the IP address of the user for whom the content was uploaded to a central office at the Federal Criminal Police Office. At the central office, the competent public prosecutor's office is subsequently established in order to enable effective prosecution of hate speech.