Germany wants to Fine Facebook for Fake News

Germany is very unhappy with Facebook's "fake news" problem. In fact, German politicians are considering fining the website €500,000 ($520,000) for every offending post it fails to take down within 24 hours.

The impact of fake news. Fake viral news on Facebook has been blamed for the spread of misinformation. In particular, there has been speculation that fake news on Facebook played a huge role to the wins of Donald Trump in the US presidential election in November and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippine presidential election earlier this year.

Proposed Legislation. Germany does not want the same thing to happen in their country. Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to run next year for her fourth term.

The German government wants to draft a new bill that will levy fines upon Facebook and similar social networks. In addition, the new law would also require Facebook and other social media platforms to set up legal protection units for people affected by the fake stories.

Thomas Oppermann, the Social Democratic Party's parliamentary chair, believes that social media platforms should be made to pay a fine if fake reports are not promptly removed. He particularly focused on Facebook stating that it was one of the leading causes of fake news.

"Facebook did not avail itself of the opportunity to regulate the issue of complaint management itself," Oppermann told Der Spiegel magazine last week. "Now market dominating platforms like Facebook will be legally required to build a legal protection office in Germany that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."

"If, after appropriate examination, Facebook does not delete the offending message within 24 hours, it should expect individual fines of up to 500,000 euros ($523,320)," Oppermann added.

German lawmakers are worried that Russia will somehow try to undermine the Bundestag elections next year. There have been reports that Moscow intelligence units were behind the Democratic National Convention hacking, leaking thousands of emails of Hilary Clinton's key aides.

Facebook's Response. CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on record saying that it is "pretty crazy" to think fake news on Facebook would have had any impact on the election. But after Zuckerberg's statement, Facebook did promise to roll out a fact-checking feature that would allow its users to check an article's accuracy.

"We take the issues raised very seriously, and we are engaging with key politicians and digital experts from all parties and relevant ministries interested in this matter. Our announcement last week underlines our efforts to improve our systems. We have announced several new functions that address the issue of fake news and hoaxes," said a Facebook spokesperson.