Last Tuesday (2/07/2019), Social Media Giant Facebook was fined $2.3 million by German Authorities for violating hate speech law, alleging that the social media did not provide a full report on the procedures for handling illegal content complaints for the past 6 months in 2018.
The Federal Office for Justice (BfJ) sub-division of German Justice Ministry said that their report about a law against illegal content, in its transparency for the first half of 2018 failed to meet the requirement of Berlin’s Network Enforcement Act.
“In the penalty charge notice, the BfJ reprimands in particular that in the released report, the number of received complaints about unlawful content is incomplete,” said the agency at the announcement, he also adds “This creates a distorted picture in the public about the extent of illegal content and the way the social network deals with them,”.
Their report was failed to meet the requirement because it was incomplete, it didn’t include enough information about how the social network handles the Illegal complaints. They also allegedly gave incorrect information about the feedback it received on the complaints.
The company didn’t immediately respond to the comment they received about the issue. Facebook can still pay this amount of fine.
The fine is a small amount compared with Facebook’s first-quarter revenues about $15.8 billion. But it has symbolic weight, marking the first time that a European country has sanctioned an American social media giant for failing to be transparent about the way it handles hate speech.
The law that Facebook violates is known as NetDG and took effect since January 1, 2018. companies are required to publish a report twice a year in German regarding complaints they have received. this law is used to control what appears on social media, companies are required to publish a report twice a year in German regarding complaints they have received.
