In a bid to curb the increasing rate of abuse online Germany on her part has enacted a new law prohibiting hate speech on social media.
The new law aimed at regulating social media platforms will ensure the removal of hate speech within set periods of receiving complaints — within 24 hours in straightforward cases or within seven days where evaluation of content is more difficult.
The name of the law (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz) translates to ‘Enforcement on Social Networks’. It’s also referred to as NetzDG, an abbreviation of its full German name.
Non compliance to the law will see defaulters fined up to 50 million euros ($58 million) by the country’s Ministry of Justice, though there is a transition period for companies to gear up for compliance — which will end on January 1, 2018.
Germany proposed the legislation back in April which was not favorably accepted in some quarters. Facebook on its part fired back, claiming the bill would simply encourage sites to simply take down content to avoid the fines. Further, “It would have the effect of transferring responsibility for complex legal decisions from public authorities to private companies,” a Facebook spokesperson told Engadget at the time. Regardless, the bill passed a month later.
Social platform giants such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were couched as the initial targets for the law, but the government is looking to apply the law more widely — including to content on networks such as Reddit, Tumblr, Flickr, Vimeo, VK and Gab.
It should be noted that Germany seriously cracks down on hate speech, and police raided 36 homes earlier this year while investigating users who had posted such. Those who are charged with inciting racial hatred can be imprisoned for up to five years.The usage bar for complying with the take down time frames is being set at a service having more than two million registered users in Germany.
While Spiegal Online reports that the German government is intending to have 50 people assigned to the task of implementing and policing the law. It also says all social media platforms, regardless of size, must provide a contact person in Germany for user complaints or requests for information from investigators. Recent queries will need to be answered within 48 hours or risk penalties, it adds.
One obvious question here is how any fines could be applied across international borders if a social media firm has no bricks-and-mortar presence in Germany, though.
The law does also require social media firms operating in Germany to appoint a contact person in the country. But again, those companies that are outside Germany may be rather hard to police — unless the government intends to start trying to block access to non-compliance services which would only invite further controversy.
The country has specific hate speech laws which criminalize certain types of speech, such as incitement to racial and religious violence, and the NetzDG law cites sections of the existing German Criminal Code — applying itself specifically to social media platforms.
However, Germany is not alone in Europe at seeking to clamp down on illegal content being spread and amplified via social media, either.
The UK has also been active recently in leading a push by several G7 nations against online extremism — with the apparent aim of reducing take down times for this type of content to an average of just two hours.
Germany has also been pushing for a European Union wide response to tackling the spread of hate speech across online platforms.
And last week the European Commission put out new guidance for social media platforms urging them to be more pro-active about removing “illegal content” — including by developing tools to automative identification and prevent re-uploading of problem content.
It warned social media giants that it might seek to draft a legislative proposal if they do not improve take down performance within six months.
