Berlin: Social media giants including Facebook and Twitter are not doing enough to curb hate speech on their platforms and face fines of up to $70.1 million if they do not strengthen their efforts to delete illegal posts, a German government minister said Tuesday.
The move by the country's authorities comes as technology companies face increasing scrutiny worldwide over how they police online material, including hate speech, potential terrorist propaganda and fake news.
For tech companies and free speech campaigners, this global regulatory push could limit how individuals communicate online by restricting people's digital activities and allowing governments to expand their control over vast swaths of the internet.
Yet for a growing number of policymakers across Europe, the United States and elsewhere, the social media companies have a responsibility to block harmful content from their digital platforms, and must respect national rules.
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On Tuesday, Heiko Maas, Germany's minister of justice and consumer protection, said he would propose a law that would impose stiff fines on tech companies whose social media platforms did not respond swiftly enough to complaints about illegal content. Maas has been a vocal critic of how such companies treat online content that violates his country's strict rules on hate speech.
"We must increase the pressure on social networks," he said in a statement announcing the proposed legislation.
"This will set binding standards for how companies running social networks must handle complaints and require them to delete criminal content," he said of the proposal, under which companies could face fines of up to 50 million euros, or $70.1 million.
The development followed the publication Tuesday of the results of a study that showed that Facebook and Twitter failed to meet the German target of removing 70 per cent of hate speech within 24 hours of being alerted to its presence.
Tech companies deny playing fast and loose with national hate speech laws, saying they have taken down illegal material when it has been flagged by users. They also argue, however, that there is a fine line between complying with a country's rules and outright digital censorship.
"We are doing far more than any other company to try and get on top of hate speech on our platform," Richard Allen, Facebook's head of public policy in Europe, said in an interview late last year. "We recognise that this is a work in progress."
New York Times
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