German authorities have decided to strengthen control over comments on the Internet
Germany's ruling coalition of the Christian parties CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party of Germany has agreed to strengthen measures against the publication of hate comments and fake news on social media.
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Deutsche Welle reports this.
The coalition intends to ensure that Facebook, Twitter and other similar Internet services have easily accessible complaint departments and respond within 24 hours. Otherwise, they will face a large fine.
Politicians say internet platforms are doing a poor job of complying with legal requirements to remove hateful comments and defamatory fake news. Therefore, in their opinion, strict deadlines should now be required.
“We hope that Facebook's deletion practices will be significantly improved,” said Heiko Mas. He threatened “urgent legal consequences” if monitoring in the coming weeks reveals that too little punishable content is being erased.
Such measures by the German authorities are associated with the strengthening of extremist right-wing and chauvinistic sentiments in society, which are fueled, among other things, by unscrupulous speculation in the media and social networks about the problems of adaptation in the country of refugees from the Middle East.
German authorities have decided to tighten controls over online comments.