Earlier this month, Germany approved a bill that will impose a fine to social network sites that fail to remove “criminal content” as defined by German law within 24 hours of it being posted. The bill also states that other illegal content must be removed with seven day. Though the bill still needs parliamentary approval before going into effect, it is likely to pass. With this being said, I am unsure where I stand on this bill. Looking at it in one light, it will undoubtedly reduce the amount of hate speech posted online. The downside however it will likely cause many posts, that do not contain “illegal content”, to be removed. This will happen because social network sites will likely not want to risk being fined and therefore err on the side of caution in regard to removing posts. This raises the prime ethical concern of monitoring fake news. Though readers do not want to be deceived by false information, posters want to be able to post opinion pieces. With this bill in place, those opinion based posts would be subject to removal if they contain opinions that could be seen as “illegal content.” Personally, though I agree that something needs to be done about fake news, I do not believe this is the way to handle the issue.
Cnbc. "Germany Could Start Fining Social Media Giants $53 Million for Not Tackling Fake News, Hate Crime." CNBC. CNBC, 06 Apr. 2017. Web. 13 Apr. 2017.
1 Comment
Noemi Cuin
5/10/2017 10:54:32 pm
hi ian,
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AuthorIan Kindall a CD major emphasizing in Game Design Archives
May 2017
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