Germany could fine Facebook €500,000 for each fake news post

Dec17

by Sindy Cator on December 17, 2016 at 6:57 pm

Germany isn’t confident Facebook can self-regulate its fake news problem. After announcing it was partnering with third-party fact-checkers earlier this week, Facebook now faces the possibility of massive fines for each piece of misinformation. The proposed legislation would levy a €500,000 ($523,320) fine if Facebook and other social networks failed to remove offending messages containing hate speech or fake news. The language used suggests this would be for all social media sites, although Social Democratic Party parliamentary chairman Thomas Oppermann did single out Facebook specifically in comments to Der Spiegel. Facebook did not avail itself of the opportunity to regulate the…