Germany has Presented a New Law to Prevent Online Hate Speech

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Battling with hate speech on social media by Germany is now live. It has been considered a major attempt by the country in getting social networks to eliminate offensive posts within 24 hours. But, if the content is more difficult to evaluate, it might take 7 days. Those who will unable to fulfill the requirement may be fined up to 58 million U.S dollars (50 million Euros) by the Ministry of Justice of Germany. Point to be noted that they will get a handsome amount of time until 1st January 2018 to fulfill the requirement. Germany proposed the legislation in the month of April and it was named the Network Enforcement Act (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz) NetzDG. Facebook has indicated that this law would encourage various social media and other sites to just take down content to prevent the fines.

Germany has Presented a New Law to Prevent Online Hate Speech

A spokesperson of Facebook said that it would have the effect of transferring responsibility for complicated decisions from public authorities to private companies. It is important that Germany is seriously cracking down on hate speech and police raided at least 36 homes at the beginning of current year during investigation from users who had posted such types of speech. New York Times also reported that involved people were charged with inciting racial hatred and they can be imprisoned for more than 5 years. The Spiegel Online reported that NetzDG law will be applied to any site that meets the legal definition of social network in spite of its size. Germany shouldn’t be considered alone threatening internet giants with heavy penalties if they don’t take down hate speech.