I totally agree with you here! I think it’s not the corporations that should make decisions during these times—I don’t think Twitter, in this case, wants to, either. But to understand why Merkel said that, we need to understand how freedom of speech works in Germany.

Germany, like many other countries, believes in freedom of speech as well as enforcing consequences for harmful and non-factual statements. There is a lot of regulation surrounding this, and it’s growing (which is an area the US needs to “catch up” in). In Germany, you can’t wear an Auschwitz sweater, deny the Holocaust, or incite violence without facing fines or jail time. White-supremacy, anti-semitism, and extreme right political parties are effectively outlawed. And now EU regulators want to force social media platforms to remove illegal content. Compared to the US, freedom of speech in Germany seems “limited.”

I’m not sure how freedom of speech is handled in other countries, and Germany has many right-extremist issues of its own, but the point is Twitter wouldn’t be in a position to make these decisions if we had better rules/regulation around this that apply universally.

Some examples from Facebook of how this is enforced in Germany (translating the German website):
-28 y.o. calls for stoning of Merkel > 2000 Euro fine
-18 y.o. Calls for lynching of 17 y.o. prisoner > 2 weeks detention as juvenile delinquent
-43 y.o. Calls for murder of mayor > 1380 Euro fine

When law enforcement can crack down on individual cases like this, no account would need to be banned. Let me know what you guys think!

Edit: I know inciting violence in the US is also illegal, but it’s extremely conditional and not enforced on social media. The threat needs to be direct, imminent, and probably, making it more difficult to legally pursue some cases.

Links:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/6146b352-6b40-48ef-b10b-a34ad585b91a

https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/holocaust-antisemitism/holocaust-denial-laws.html

https://no-hate-speech.de/de/wissen/welche-gesetze-gibt-es-gegen-hate-speech/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/08/can-speech-social-media-incite-violence/%3foutputType=amp