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Germany proposed a new law today to fight hate speech, threatening social media networks like Twitter and Facebook with €50 million fines.
Under the rules proposed, social media companies must clearly explain rules and complaint procedures to users and follow up on each complaint. Blatantly illegal content must be deleted within 24 hours, while other law-breaking content must be taken down or blocked within seven days.
“Facebook and Twitter missed the chance to improve their takedown practices,” said Heiko Maas, federal minister for justice and consumer protection. Maas claimed social media networks don’t take complaints seriously. “For companies to take on their responsibility in question of deleting criminal content, we need legal regulations.”
Good. Hopefully more countries will follow. Damn Merkel, oppressing my right to share fake news and insulting others.
I don't agree with this. Government shouldn't be telling us what we can and can't say. Even if it is hate speech.
The only thing this law does is make sure that you can't say crap on online media that you also can't say in public. It's not curtailing free speech in general, just making sure there is no grey area any more. Whether or not hate speech, libel and other stuff should be legal in the first place is wholly different debate, one Germany has already mostly answered with "nope".
Germany is pretty much the leader of the free world nowadays while the US, UK, Russia and possibly France are on a very dark path.
What defines what is a 'hate' post these days? The problem I see with this, rightly or wrongly, is that most of us can see there is potential for the definition, whatever it may be, to get narrower and narrower or more biased on one side or the other over time.
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