Draconian measures of Germany on social media for false news

A draft regulation recently adopted by the German authorities, in accordance with which fines up to 50 million…
euro on social networking websites that will fail to delete posts hate speech or false news from their platforms.
Specifically, and as reported in publications of the Financial Times, the German minister of Justice Hiko Μαας recently stated that social media are not doing enough to combat racist speech or false news posted by their clients.
“The rate of criminal content, which is deleted is very small and the delete is not immediate,” said he before journalists.
The regulation described the growing concern within the political circles on the possible impact of the false news and hate speech in elections expected to be held in Germany in the current year. The concerns are related to the way in which the content of misinformation can affect the opinion of citizens, as for example was done with the false news that Pope Francis approved the election of Donald Trump, reports the FT in an article.
However, some in Germany, express their scepticism on the subject. For example, the German association of digital commerce, BitKom, has been placed on the subject by claiming that any requirement of the platforms delete such posts within 24 hours from the billions that are managed daily, “it is simply impossible to implement at the operational level” and something like that would create a “permanent mechanism of censorship”.
As reported in the FT, the draft regulation focuses mainly on the rhetoric of hatred that has been heaped upon the German-speaking Internet by the summer of 2015 when the chancellor ‘Ángela Merkel opened the country’s borders for the entrance of hundreds of refugees, who were trying to escape from the economic misery that prevailed in the countries of the middle East and North Africa. However, mr Μαας added that the plan will probably focus also to the false news, especially when they are used as tools for slander or libel. For this category we will not introduce sanctions of imprisonment.
These regulations will create a basic condition for social media, according to which you will need to provide their customers with “an easily identifiable, directly accessible, and always available process for reporting complaints of criminal content”. In addition, they will be obliged to examine all complaints within 24 hours and you will need to delete or exclude content within a period of 7 days.
The German minister of Justice also stressed that social networks will have to present a quarterly report on how they handle the complaints, stating the number that they have received and the way in which determined how to deal with them.
In addition, the plan stated that the social networking sites that fail to create effective procedures for the management of complaints will commit an offence for which, in all probability, will be punished with fines that can be up to 50 million euros.
Mr. Μαας, citing research data published by the agency Jugendschutz, stressed once again that the social media platforms are not doing enough to combat hate speech and false news. It has been specifically stated with percentages explaining that Twitter deletes only 1% of the content referred to and the Facebook the 39%. In a much better position is Google, since, as explained 90% of the posts that have been reported by users has been deleted.