German authorities, meanwhile, have reached a deal with Facebook, Google and Twitter to get tougher on offensive content, with the outlets agreeing to apply domestic laws, rather than their own corporate policies, to reviews of posts.

Critics call it the enforcement of political correctness, raising the question of what constitutes hate speech and sparking a national debate over free expression. Germans have been outraged, for instance, by reports of more than 100 sexual assaults and robberies in the city of Cologne allegedly committed by gangs of young Arab and North African men on New Year’s Eve. Some Germans are questioning whether their online comments could be taken down, or whether they could be charged with incitement, for publicly pondering whether refugees could have been among the assailants…

“After the Second World War, it was clear that anything that could re-create National Socialist or racist thinking had to be stopped,” said Volker Beck, a lawmaker from Germany’s Green Party. Last month, he filed a lawsuit against a German anti-refugee group after its followers issued death threats against him for publicly defending the right of Muslim women to wear veils at school.

“I’m a civil rights defender, but there has to be a red line,” Beck said.