The issue focused on German constitutional court rulings that ruled it unconstitutional for officials to regulate hate speech online. German judges rejected Facebook's requests to filter hate speech by refusing to permit it to be filtered out of search results. Facebook argued that since search results only serve as a secondary filter for users, Facebook should not have to filter them out of search results. German judges disagreed and ruled that Facebook must filter hate speech out of search results. Facebook appealed the ruling and lost in lower courts. Google challenged the ruling and lost as