WhatsApp has become a haven for Nazi propaganda in Germany: report

Public displays of Nazi imagery are illegal in Germany; yet, that hasn’t stopped far-right ideologists from spreading swastikas and other Nazi propaganda on WhatsApp.

A new report from BuzzFeed News shows that WhatsApp users in Germany are successfully spreading Nazi imagery on the app. Even worse, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, isn’t taking any action to stop it.

According to the report, BuzzFeed looked at nearly a dozen WhatsApp groups, some with names such as "Ku Klux Klan International,” and found Nazi slogans, antisemitic imagery, and propaganda “glorifying” Adolf Hitler. The groups also contained violent rhetoric aimed at immigrants and leftists.

Furthermore, the members of these groups are using WhatsApps' own tools, its custom stickers feature, to create and share Nazi symbols within the app.

The use of Nazi symbols is illegal under German law. A lawyer speaking to BuzzFeed explains that while sharing these images in a private chat with one or a few individuals wouldn’t result in punishment by law enforcement, it could be deemed a “criminal offense” based on the size of the audience. The far right WhatsApp groups viewed in this report had between 90 and 250 members.

In a statement, WhatsApp seems to be absolving responsibility as the content is being shared as private messages and not public posts.

"As a messaging service, we do not have access to private messages shared by users,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in a statement emailed to BuzzFeed. “We encourage people to report issues to WhatsApp to ensure the security of our platform."

WhatsApp’s parent company, Facebook, has taken a hard stance against white supremacy on its site. The company recently decided that its policies separating white nationalism and white separatism from this hateful ideology was inaccurate and banned posts in support of the two beliefs as well.

As Facebook plans to combine all of its messaging services, including WhatsApp, Messengers, and Instagram, it seems increasingly difficult for the company to try to run each platform as separate entities with individual policies.

Mashable has reached out to WhatsApp for additional comment, and we will update this story if we hear back.