German
lawmakers have approved a controversial law that would impose high fines on
social media companies like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube for failing to swiftly
delete posts deemed to exhibit hate speech.
Deutsche Welle, 30 June 2017
Under the
new legislation, social media companies have 24 hours to remove posts that
obviously violate German law and have been reported by other users. In cases
that are more ambiguous, Facebook and other sites have seven days to deal with
the offending post. If they don't comply with the new legislation, the companies could face a fine of up to 50 million euros ($57.1 million).
The law was
passed with votes from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) - Social Democratic
Party (SPD) government coalition. The Left Party in the Bundestag voted against
it, while members of the Greens abstained.
The new
rules are supposed to drastically reduce the number of posts containing hate speech, fake news and terror propaganda on social media. In January and
February 2017, Youtube deleted 90 percent of hate speech videos reported by
users - but Twitter only deleted one percent. Facebook did a little better at
39 percent.
"We do
not accept the fact that companies in Germany do not adhere to the law,"
Justice Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) told public broadcaster ARD in April,
explaining why the new legislation was necessary.
Skeptics
criticize, however, that under the new rules social media managers are the ones
who have to decide whether content complies with German law. They also worry
that freedom of speech will suffer since, in their opinion, companies are
likely to delete many posts just to be on the safe side and avoid fines.
Maas said
the new law didn't curb freedom of speech but was rather a prerequisite for it.
To counter the criticism, the legislation also stipulates the establishment of
an independent regulatory institution to which Facebook and other sites can
pass on content when they're not sure whether it should be deleted.
Investigators there will then make the final decision.
Landmark
legislation in Europe
In addition
to the strict new rules about deletion, the law forces networks to reveal the
identity of those behind the hateful posts and to offer users "an easily
recognizable, directly reachable, and constantly available" complaint
process for "prosecutable content," which includes libel, slander,
defamation, incitement to commit a crime, hate speech against a particular
social group, and threats.
Germany is
the first country in Europe to introduce such clear legal guidelines against
online hate speech.
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