By Anton Troianovski and Sam Schechner
BERLIN -- German lawmakers are set to pass legislation Friday to
fine social-media companies up to $57 million for failing to
quickly delete hate speech, libel and other illegal content, one of
the most aggressive efforts in the West to regulate content posted
online.
Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and civil-rights groups
criticized the law, warning it would stifle freedom of speech by
encouraging social networks to delete controversial but legal
posts. The law, some critics warned, could set the stage for
authoritarian regimes to force tech firms to remove more content
faster.
The law, on course to pass through Germany's lower house of
parliament Friday, would take effect Oct. 1. Large social networks
such as Facebook and Twitter Inc. would be required to delete
"clearly illegal" content within 24 hours, while having the ability
to set up an industry self-regulating body for processing
borderline cases within one week.
The law's quick passage -- the bill was introduced by the
Justice Ministry in March -- illustrates the scramble across Europe
to ratchet up pressure on tech companies to remove terrorist
content and hate speech. It also reflects fears among European
politicians that their democracies are vulnerable to propaganda
campaigns spread via social media.
The new liability could test Facebook, Google and Twitter's
highly automated business models by forcing them to deploy more
human expertise to make fine judgment calls on myriad individual
posts. How they tackle this challenge could in turn set a costly
template for the policing of social network posts world-wide.
"We cannot accept that social networks ignore our laws," German
Justice Minister Heiko Maas said. "They can no longer allow their
infrastructure to be abused for committing crimes."
But Susan Benesch, who studies ways to fight hate speech at
Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said
the 24-hour time frame set by the law would lead internet companies
to process complaints using algorithms "that are not yet up to the
task."
"The German bill would likely push internet companies into
massive, over-broad censorship," she said. "We can expect more,
even more restrictive laws, in Europe and other parts of the world,
especially if the German law passes."
Tech executives, for their part, say they already do a lot to
police their platforms for hate speech and terrorist propaganda.
But one executive said that the new German law would hurt those
efforts by forcing companies to shift resources away from their own
efforts to focus on compliance with the German law.
Facebook said it already planned to increase its team examining
user complaints to 7,500 from 4,500 world-wide and to more than 700
from 600 for Germany. Earlier this year, it told German parliament
the law could lead to "the deletion of legitimate posts" because
"even large social networks will not be able to implement
completely legally sound and effective processes to examine all
complaints within the short time-frame."
Google told the Justice Ministry that it fields 200,000 user
complaints globally a day on its YouTube video platform and that
the tight deadlines and potential fines would create "a significant
incentive to delete any content immediately after a complaint."
Mr. Maas counters that overzealous deletion of posts by social
networks isn't a concern because internet companies have a business
interest in allowing as much content as possible.
"Social networks won't risk losing their users, who will surely
turn away if their posts are constantly being unjustly deleted,"
Mr. Maas said in a statement.
Mr. Maas in 2015 helped set up a voluntary program in which
Facebook, Google and Twitter agreed to delete most hate speech
reported by German users within 24 hours. But in March, Mr. Maas
said a study commissioned by his ministry had found that Facebook
and Twitter were too slow.
The new legislation details 22 sections of the criminal code
social networks will have to help enforce. Among them: laws banning
libel, character defamation, hate speech, insults against
religions, offensive statements and privacy violations.
After the recent terrorist attacks in London and Manchester,
British Prime Minister Theresa May called for new regulations, and
potentially fines, to force tech firms to remove terrorist
propaganda more quickly from their platforms. Later in the month,
she was joined by French President Emmanuel Macron, who called tech
firms' efforts "insufficient."
But Germany's new law goes farther than any other in Western
Europe by forcing tech companies to set up a system for users to
flag illegal content and threatening fines for noncompliance. Until
now, Brussels and other European governments have generally settled
for a voluntary approach.
Indeed, earlier this month, the European Union's executive arm
reported improvement from those voluntary efforts, saying that tech
companies had boosted removal of illegal content including
terrorist propaganda 59% of the time when it was flagged for
review, up from a rate of 28% six months ago.
Civil-rights groups, meanwhile, say the German law will embolden
undemocratic regimes to make their own efforts to require global
social networks to enforce domestic laws.
"This is a great opportunity for authoritarian states," said
Johannes Baldauf of the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, a German
foundation that fights hate speech but opposes the legislation.
Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco contributed to this
article.
Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com and Sam
Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 29, 2017 13:49 ET (17:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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