Germany publishes draft law to fight hate speech

The German government has published a draft law that will impose fines of up to €50 million on social networking sites that do not remove hate speech and fake news. Content that is considered ‘blatantly illegal’ needs to be removed within 24 hours, whereas other ‘law-breaking content’ should be taken down or blocked within a week. According to German federal minister for justice and consumer protection, Heiko Maas, ‘Facebook and Twitter missed the chance to improve their takedown practices’, adding that, ‘for companies to take on their responsibility in question of deleting criminal content, we need legal regulations’.