[quote][B]Social media companies in Germany face fines of up to 50m euros ($57.1; £43.9m) if they fail to remove "obviously illegal" content in time.[/B]
From October, Facebook, YouTube, and other sites with more than two million users in Germany must take down posts containing hate speech or other criminal material within 24 hours.
Content that is not obviously unlawful must be assessed within seven days.
The new law is one of the toughest of its kind in the world.
Failure to comply will result in a 5m euro penalty, which could rise to 50m euros depending on the severity of the offence.
In a statement, Facebook said it shared the goal of the German government to fight hate speech.
It added: "We believe the best solutions will be found when government, civil society and industry work together and that this law as it stands now will not improve efforts to tackle this important societal problem."
German MPs voted in favour of the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (NetzDG) law after months of deliberation, on the last legislative day before the Bundestag's summer break.
But it has already been condemned by human rights groups and industry representatives.
They claim the tight time limits are unrealistic, and will lead to accidental censorship as technology companies err on the side of caution and delete ambiguous posts to avoid paying penalties.
...
The bill has also faced criticism from human right's campaigners.
"Many of the violations covered by the bill are highly dependent on context, context which platforms are in no position to assess," wrote the UN Special Rapporteur to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, David Kaye.
He added that "the obligations placed upon private companies to regulate and take down content raises concern with respect to freedom of expression".
The law could still be stopped in Brussels, where campaigners have claimed it breaches EU laws.[/quote]
[url]http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40444354[/url]
Bit of a slippery slope
I know it's a slippery slope in all, but If what I hear is true, a lot of Far right and Far left sites are going to go down. And a couple of news outlets.
[QUOTE=OmniConsUme;52419100]I know it's a slippery slope in all, but If what I hear is true, a lot of Far right and Far left sites are going to go down. And a couple of news outlets.[/QUOTE]
So who gets to decide, and based on what standard, which are "far right" and "far left." That's always my problem with that kind of thinking.
[QUOTE=sgman91;52419250]So who gets to decide, and based on what standard, which are "far right" and "far left." That's always my problem with that kind of thinking.[/QUOTE]
Anything thing that has links to Russian Disinformation.
A lot of people will have to be de-programmed.
[QUOTE=sgman91;52419250]So who gets to decide, and based on what standard, which are "far right" and "far left." That's always my problem with that kind of thinking.[/QUOTE]
It does specify "obviously" illegal content.
So in other words it probably mainly applies to things that are really clearly not ok, not just things that maybe isn't ok.
[QUOTE=elowin;52419326]It does specify "obviously" illegal content.
So in other words it probably mainly applies to things that are really clearly not ok, not just things that maybe isn't ok.[/QUOTE]
They can't delete a video of someone shitting into someone's mouth, as it supposedly didn't violate their TOS.
I have my doubts about effective Facebook moderation.
[QUOTE=bdd458;52419901]They can't delete a video of someone shitting into someone's mouth, as it supposedly didn't violate their TOS.
I have my doubts about effective Facebook moderation.[/QUOTE]
Being incredibly gross aside, I don't really see how that's harmful pending further context :v:
Their ToS really are a mess though, considering they allow that but no exposed breasts.
[editline]fake edit[/editline]
Anyway, I found a seemingly pretty decent English-language overview of this on Medium:
- [URL="https://medium.com/speech-privacy/what-might-germanys-new-hate-speech-take-down-law-mean-for-tech-companies-c352efbbb993"]What might Germany’s new hate speech take-down law mean for tech companies[/URL][URL="https://archive.is/gYIZk"]?[/URL]
- [URL="https://medium.com/speech-privacy/netzdg-references-to-the-german-criminal-code-in-english-fe8ba622d620"]NetzDG & relevant German Criminal Code sections (in English[/URL][URL="https://archive.is/k9m16"])[/URL]
From what I can tell, it doesn't expand which content is illegal and doesn't directly affect end users.
However, it does appear to be a messily implemented messy solution to a messy problem. It's probably going to end up in some court or other.
To me it's evident that e.g. Facebook could do more to comply with our existing hate speech laws (since other huge companies manage to do that already), but I hope they won't take this law as occasion to block [I]too[/I] much because that's cheaper. ([img]https://facepunch.com/fp/ratings/rainbow.png[/img])
There is tons of criticism from experts, from tech companies, university professor and the chaos computer club, but apparently they only listen to the "experts" which tell them what they want to hear.
It is just another example of how terrible the current government of Germany leads the country. There are already laws against hatespeech, all they have to do is to enforce them. Why even delete harmful messages? It makes it easier to figure out who is a crazy person. Instead, there is a much possibilty that this new law will be abused for censorship.
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