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Germany has followed through on its proposal to make social networks remove slanderous hate speech and fake news or face massive fines.
The nation's Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz (Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection) has announced that cabinet approved a plan to force social network operators to create a complaints mechanism allowing members of the public to report content that online translate-o-tronic services categorise as "insults, libel, slander, public prosecutions, crimes, and threats."
The Bill approved by Cabinet proposes that social networks be required to establish complaints officer who is subject to local law and gets the job of removing obviously criminal content 24 hours after receiving a complaint. A seven-day deadline will apply to content that's not immediately identifiable as infringing. Social networks will also be required to inform complainants of the outcome of their takedown requests and to provide quarterly summaries of their activities.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:20PM (8 children)
To decentralize social networking.
It's a shame that Diaspora [diasporafoundation.org] hasn't gained more acceptance.
However, it's not so surprising, given that almost every ISP cripples upload speeds and implements abusive TOS which restricts the utility of decentralization.
That kills freedom and puts us in the situation where a government can force a couple of companies to enforce censorship over millions.
Using Diaspora (there are many others too) as a model, one can privately host content and federate it with other content without corporate or government rent seeking and interference.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:38PM
Hmm, perhaps it's up to those of us who have been able to hang on to a middle class existence to buy hosting and provide endpoints to distributed platforms.
Granted, then hosting providers become the weak link, but it's at least a degree better than completely centralized services.
I run an IRC server on my server in the clouds, although it's only used by close friends. I used to run an XMPP server as well but it wasn't used at all after Google (Talk) and Facebook (Messenger) stopped federating their servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:48PM (6 children)
Whatever you come up with, it will be 1,000 nerds and libertarians using it while the general public uses the platform they can upload videos on.
Your slogan will be "Decentralize Fake News!" Except the public doesn't want fake news.
Don't forget the social child porn.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 08 2017, @06:35PM (5 children)
Actually 1000 nerds might be more useful to listen to than 100 000 lolcat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:05PM (4 children)
No, all those thousand nerds will be automatically suspected of hacking, terrorism, and child pornography. The news anchors will say, "Anarchist hackers have set up their own dark social network on the darkweb to hide their dark secret perversions and plans to commit dark acts of terror." Everyone will believe it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:33PM (3 children)
Except that mainstream media is about to loose their intelligent viewership, and trust.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:45PM (1 child)
Surely it lost those a long time ago?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @01:14AM
"Surely it loost those a long time ago"
FTFY
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday April 09 2017, @01:06AM
For my part, already gone.
It's only a contest between PR mavens now. Facts, journalism, and integrity are long gone.
Washington DC delenda est.