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The German\u00a0cabinet has backed proposals to\u00a0hit social media firms\u00a0with fines of up to\u00a0\u20ac50 million if they fail to promptly remove illegal hate speech from their platforms \u2014 within 24 hours after a complaint\u00a0has been made for \u201cobviously criminal content\u201d, and within seven days for other illegal content.<\/p>\n
The draft law would also see individuals from companies facing fines of up to\u00a0\u20ac5M for any criminal content removal failures.<\/p>\n
In a statement today<\/a>\u00a0[translated via Google Translate], German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said: \u201cThe providers of social networks are responsible when their platforms are abused to spread hate criminality and criminal false news. There can be just as little space on social networks for criminal acts as on the street. To do better, we owe the victims of hate criminality. The Internet is characterized by the debate culture and the social climate in our country. Verbal radicalization is often the precursor to physical violence.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFreedom of expression ends where criminal law begins,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Germany\u00a0has specific hate speech laws<\/a>\u00a0which criminalize certain types of speech, such as incitement to racial violence. But Maas is also agitating\u00a0for a European-level\u00a0approach\u00a0to tackling the spread of hate speech by online platforms, saying now that he will present the government\u2019s\u00a0proposals for regulation to colleagues in the European Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to continue the process at European level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The EU currently has\u00a028 Member States, including Germany, and in May last year<\/a>\u00a0its executive body, the European Commission, unveiled\u00a0a code of conduct<\/a> for handling hate speech on social platforms, securing agreement on this initiative from\u00a0Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft. It remains to be seen whether the EC will feel the need to push for\u00a0a tougher\u00a0stance across the region.<\/p>\n The German government has been cranking up the\u00a0pressure on social media companies to tackle a surge\u00a0in hate speech sentiments spreading via their platforms for several\u00a0years now, following the refugee crisis in Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n In December 2015<\/a>\u00a0it secured an agreement from Facebook, Google and Twitter\u00a0they would\u00a0delete hate speech on their platforms within 24 hours. But it\u2019s been unhappy with their performance \u2014 calling out Facebook and Twitter for poor complaint handling earlier this month, when it\u00a0also\u00a0proposed the new law<\/a>\u00a0that\u2019s now been approved\u00a0by the cabinet.<\/p>\n The government is clearly hoping\u00a0the threat of fines will enforce better\u00a0handling of complaints and faster removal of illegal content than political pressure and verbal agreements from social media giants to \u2018do more\u2019 has thus far achieved.<\/p>\n A recent analysis of the performance of the three firms at handling hate speech complaints in Germany, conducted by local youth protection organization jugendschutz.net<\/a>, found that Facebook only deleted 39 per cent of reported criminal content, while Twitter only removed\u00a0one in a hundred reported messages. (Although Facebook disputed those results \u2014 saying its own analysis showed it was performing better.)<\/p>\n Google was judged to have\u00a0faired better at swiftly nixing hate speech from its social sharing platform YouTube. (Although the company has recently faced a separate\u00a0backlash from advertisers<\/a> concerned that their marketing messages are ending up alongside extremist content.)<\/p>\n Maas said today the\u00a0cabinet backing for the draft law paves the way for it to be adopted\u00a0in Germany within the current legislative period.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve reached out to Facebook, Twitter and Google for comment and will update this story with any response.\u00a0Update:\u00a0<\/strong>A Facebook spokesperson has now provided the following statement: \u201cWe work very hard to remove illegal content from our platform and are determined to work with others to solve this problem. As experts have pointed out, this legislation would force private companies rather than the courts to become the judges of what is illegal in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n Facebook previously told us<\/a> it will have more\u00a0than\u00a0700 people working on content review for it\u00a0in Berlin by the end of the year, adding: \u201cWe are committed to working with the government and our partners to address this societal issue.\u201d<\/p>\n On the fake news front, the company has been trialling new tools to flag disputed content in Germany since January<\/a>, as well as working with a local third party fact checking organization.<\/p>\n