{"id":12354,"date":"2017-06-30T23:26:43","date_gmt":"2017-07-01T03:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=12354"},"modified":"2017-06-30T23:26:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-01T03:26:43","slug":"german-hate-speech-law-forces-facebook-to-engage-in-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2017\/06\/30\/german-hate-speech-law-forces-facebook-to-engage-in-censorship\/","title":{"rendered":"German Hate-Speech Law Forces Facebook to Engage in Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Under the terms of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/30\/business\/germany-facebook-google-twitter.html\">a new German law<\/a>, social networks like Facebook face fines of up to $57 million if they don&#8217;t delete illegal, racist or slanderous content within 24 hours. But free-speech advocates, including the Commission for Human Rights, say the law gives too much power to Facebook and other platforms to decide what constitutes hate speech.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am concerned with the lack of judicial oversight with respect to the responsibility placed upon private social networks to remove and delete content,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/Documents\/Issues\/Opinion\/Legislation\/OL-DEU-1-2017.pdf\">said David Kaye<\/a> of the High Commission for Human Rights. &#8220;A prohibition on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous criteria, such as &#8216;insult&#8217; or &#8216;defamation,&#8217; is incompatible&#8221; with the International Covenant on Civil Rights.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The European Digital Rights group, made up of civil and human rights organizations, also protested the new law, <a href=\"https:\/\/edri.org\/files\/consultations\/tris_netzdg_edricontribution_20170620.pdf\">saying<\/a> &#8220;there is no indication of how a decision is to be made on what &#8216;violating content&#8217; might be.&#8221; The group added that it is &#8220;easy to see how the fear of high fines will bring platforms to delete and block any content that appears to generate a risk of being punished under this new law.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Committee to Protect Journalists, meanwhile, <a href=\"https:\/\/cpj.org\/blog\/2017\/04\/proposed-german-legislation-threatens-broad-intern.php\">said that the law<\/a> is ostensibly aimed at combatting disinformation and hate speech, but the way it is going to be implemented &#8220;raises concerns about restrictions on free expression and the privatization of censorship.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Under the terms of a new German law, social networks like Facebook face fines of up to $57 million if they don&#8217;t delete illegal, racist or slanderous content within 24 hours. But free-speech advocates, including the Commission for Human Rights, say the law gives too much power to Facebook and other platforms to decide what &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2017\/06\/30\/german-hate-speech-law-forces-facebook-to-engage-in-censorship\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;German Hate-Speech Law Forces Facebook to Engage in Censorship&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}