Germany’s Flawed Plan to Fight Hate Speech by Fining Tech Giants Millions

The way tech companies deal with online harassment and abuse is broken. YouTube allows anti-Semitism to stay live. Twitter waffles as targeted harassment runs rampant. Facebook takes down an iconic photo that shouldn’t be banned. Now one German politician is tired of letting platforms make excuses.

Heiko Mass, Germany’s minister of justice and consumer protection, said this week that he will propose a law that would fine social media companies up to €50 million ($53 million) for not responding quickly enough to reports of illegal content or hate speech. The law would require social media platforms to come up with ways to make it easy for users to report hateful content. Companies would have 24 hours to respond to "obviously criminal content" or a week for more ambiguous cases. Read full article