Germany to fine social media for hate speech

The German Cabinet agreed on Wednesday, April 5, to fine social network sites like Facebook for allowing hate speech.

The new rule would give social networking sites like Facebook 24 hours to remove obviously offensive posts after a complaint and a week to deal with borderline cases. The sites would be required to respond to the complainant with information about how the situation was resolved.

Further, the sites would have to tuner over the identities of any offending posters.

Companies which failed to comply would be subject to fines of 50 million euros (US$53 million) and 5 million euros (US$5.3 million) for the company’s main German representative.

Germany already has some of the world’s toughest laws against hate-speech.

The new rules might have been prompted by the success of so many nationalist/anti-immigrant/anti-minority parties in many countries. Germany is holding national elections this year and wouldn’t want to see such a party gain popularity.

As German Justice Minister Heiko Maas put it, “The providers of social platforms and networks are responsible if their platforms are being abused to spread hate crimes and criminal fake news. There should be as little room for criminal rabble rousing on social networks as there is out on the street.”