
Germany threatens to fine Facebook €500,000 for each fake news post - hellofunk
http://qz.com/865964/facebook-fb-could-face-e500000-fines-for-each-fake-news-post-in-germany/
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germanier
Two significant words from that proposal are missing from this article. The
fine is supposed to be _up to_ 500k. Other laws that are worded like that
result in much much lower fines in every practical case. The linked DW article
is more precise.

It's also not "Germany" that is threatening this fine but a single (though
influential) politician. The proposal has sparked quite some debate and nobody
can say whether it will result in any new law let alone any details.

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duckingtest
Totalitarianism, plain and simple. How are you even supposed to verify if a
news piece is fake in 24h? You can't.

'<major politician> engaged in a <criminal activity>'. No way to verify. If
genuinely fake news, delete - no fine, not delete - big fine. If true, delete
- no fine, not delete - risk of fine, which may or may not be returned later,
depending on how powerful said politician is...

So the end result is that only news from entities explicitly allowed by the
government are safe to keep.

Here's a funny thing: the only government that's not going to abuse this is
the one that's not hiding anything nefarious! So the end result is: all
stories that uncover really bad things about the government are going to
disappear, and the entity that made/published it is going to be labelled 'fake
news' if it wasn't already. Which means the only way for a media entity to
survive is to self-censor.

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manquer
It is not that difficult actually.

It requires some human effort that fb and Google are idealogically unwilling
to consider. it as simple as requiring accreditation to the national press
associations as "real" news orgs have and validating credentials as event
venues do for example. Automated solution only approaxg and democratisation of
news(I.e bloggers) is an ideological stand not a practical limitations

~~~
synicalx
But how does having 'credentials' mean that they're publishing real news? All
that does is give the Government control over who can and can't publish news,
and you cannot possibly argue that this is a good thing in any way.

In the US election coverage there have been numerous examples of established
'real' news outlets like CNN, and nice touchy-feely 'acceptable' outlets like
Huffington Post publishing stories that have either been outright lies or
completely misleading.

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wyager
"Fake news" is potentially the most blatant propaganda campaign I've seen in
the last few years. It is a very transparent effort by large, established
media groups to claim a monopoly on the dissemination of truth, and the
campaign has thus far been frighteningly successful, as indicated by the OP.

There's also a bit of a motte and bailey argument involved in this campaign.
In particular, when people ask "Can't the 'fake news' label just be applied to
any politically unfavorable news source to suppress them?", the response is
usually "Oh, this will only be used for those crazy clickbait sites that just
come up with random titles and spam Facebook ads.". But then in other
contexts, it's very obvious that NYT, AP, etc. are using this to refer to
lower-quality but only marginally more falsehood-prone tabloids like
Breitbart. Besides the differing political bias, the difference between
breitbart and NYT is a matter of selectivity. Breitbart might publish more
questionable or false stories (higher false positive rate) but they also
publish true things that the NYT doesn't (lower false negative rate). For
example, NYT's coverage of the Podesta leaks was garbage, and I had to turn to
smaller, less reputable news sources to find (100% verifiable) coverage of
leaked email contents.

Let's also not pretend that the media groups leading this campaign are
innocent of (intentionally or unintentionally) publishing some outright false
or misleading content themselves. Sure, they do it less frequently, but
they're no saints.

As for the OP, it is absolutely unreasonable to allow the government to
dictate the truth. I should not have to spell out how that can and will go
wrong. Permit people to believe what they will. If you're worried about false
information, try to make better information management tools rather than using
the government to force people into some arbitrarily chosen "correct" belief
system. This isn't some stupid appeal to the idea that objective truth doesn't
exist; it's recognizing the fact that any one person (or government Ministry
of Truth) is almost certainly wrong about a non-negligible number of things,
and it's better for at least some people to be right about any given topic
than for every single person to be uniformly right or wrong about any given
topic.

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codeddesign
If a news organization does it less frequently but has a much larger
reach...where does that stand? If a website is 40% questionable with a low
readership, but another is 10% questionable but reaches millions a day...who
is more fake? Who is more accountable? NY Times and Washington Post run heavy
political bias in their reporting with some questionable articles over the
past month. Because of their resources and readership, if 10% of their content
is intentionally misleading...is that fake news? Would they be considered a
fake news site because they mislead a large segment of the population in 10%
of their content? Or have they been socially deemed as "real news"? This is
all for example sake..

..what is fake news compared to real news?

Are their really any news outlets that are unbiased, bipartisan, in-
regurgitated, real news? My answer would be...what ever sells the most papers,
that is what is printed. A news paper seing their shares fall because of a
million small small sites acting as regurgitation machines is starting to take
its toll, and papers are calling foul and continually running with that story.
There is no real news anymore.

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hulahoof
I think it is clear the "more fake" source is the one that is "more
questionable".

The audience of a source doesn't lend or take credibility.

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Spivak
I think the parents argument is that that _harm_ done by disseminating false
information is both a function of the inaccuracy of the information and its
reach.

If a major news source intentionally slips subtle inaccuracies into their
stories to push some agenda it could reasonably be argued that it causes more
harm than a small no-name blog with no readership publishing blatant lies.

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wcummings
If Germany does this the EU will be next, I'm sure Facebook will fight this
kicking and screaming.

Facebook has a moral responsibility to exercise some editorial control imho.

~~~
e2kp
I'd rather have a shitload fo shit content (that i can choose or not to
consume) than be censored to be honest.

Governments should stop taking for granted that their people are sheep, and
maybe then they will stop being so easily manipulated

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camus2
You know what is worse than fake news ? A government suppressing speech. Who
decides what is fake and what isn't ? This is what despotism looks like. It
stems from good intentions at first then gets abused because people in charge
will always abuse their power to silence the people.

~~~
onli
Germany as a country – and its constitution – does not subscribe to that US-
american view of unregulated free speech. Never did, and has a healthy free
press anyway.

~~~
Grue3
Germany is also a country that murdered millions of people in concentration
camps less than a century ago. Which happened because National Socialists were
suppressing views opposed to their own. So maybe, just maybe, unregulated free
speech was a good idea after all.

~~~
onli
Pff. First, that is not Germany as the BRD, but the Third Reich (which did not
have the same constitution). Second, to link the holocaust to supressing
opposing views is utterly crazy. Third, Godwin's Law.

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mtgx
That's crazy. Facebook should absolutely take the government to court over
this. They're probably doing this because Google and Facebook have already
agreed to a lot of things which may have seemed "reasonable" but this is
really taking it too far. It's not Facebook's responsibility to verify the
truthfulness of all the posts on its site.

On the other hand, perhaps this forces Facebook to give up on being a "news
platform", too, and not just a social network, which wouldn't be a terrible
thing to happen.

~~~
anotherarray
>Facebook should absolutely take the government to court over this

This is not a contract between two corporations.

A private corporation should NOT sue a government for creating a new law. As
long as it's legally feasible, Germany should do whatever it deems necessary
to its own sovereignty and interests.

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michaelmrose
By that logic no individual has a right to contest any law no matter what

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anotherarray
Your comparison is meaningless.

1) A corporation is not the same as a German citizen.

2) "Contest" is not the same as "suing"

3) No German has a net worth of over U$300B (FB's Market Cap)

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michaelmrose
If they are operating within Germany they ought and I'm sure do have a right
to file a lawsuit.

