Germany Considers Fining Facebook $522,000 per Fake News Item
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Most of the fake news articles made during the election were poorly written hoaxes with the goal of collecting ad revenue. Without any of them, Trump still would've won. But even if a foreign nation is spreading propaganda through news articles, unless it calls for violence or other crimes, I don't see why Facebook has an obligation to remove them.
You guys might not fully realize this, but to many Europeans this is extremely problematic.
And unlike local newspapers with an editor that defends their editorial choices, it doesnt participate in our culture.
Facebook has no obligation, but neither does Germany to even allow the product on their market.
Reddit is in much safer water, because it is open and participates in our culture, rather than just trying to control it.
Facebooks problem is that it does editorialize -- communication and interactions from within a culture, outside of that culture.
Most European news sources these days are heavily censored to the point of being near propaganda themselves.
I would think Germany, Sweden and quite a few other countries would want to take a look at themselves before going after facebook.
It seems lately that Germany and the EU as a whole are going after multinational corporations because they see fines as a new revenue source rather than because of due cause.
But if any of us block Facebook due to the obvious udamage it does to society we start a trade-war. So regulation is really the only path available.
And in most of our cultures, companies prevent regulations by self-regulating. Whatever company triggers a new law, they get fined disproportionally because we had to spend money time and effort to make something illegal that was obviously morally dubious.
What you are seeing is Europe starting to treat american companies the same way they treat European companies.
Money and politics was the reason why things got as far as they did and esspecially companies like Facebook are being completely disrespectfull and full on predator.
It also took a while to realizle that American companies need clear rules and constant supervision when they operate in Europe. Because they will find and exploit every loophole they can (and believe that they have an obligation to their stockholders to do so).
So, for you guys this may seem to come out of nowhere, but fb has been burnng bridges all this time. Something similar happened to Microsoft.
At that point any excuse will be used as a stick until the predator is domicile.
Hint: If there are four cookies on the table, free to take, and you take all four, you wont be invited over any more.
In Europe this logic still applies, even when you do bussiness. If you ever do bussiness with Europe and you negotiate a fair price down to an unfair price, you might have a small short profit and a long term resentment that will cost you dearly. On a personal level.
Treat bussiness more like how you cultivate a healthy long term relationship.
This maybe also why its harder for startups in Europe. Long term relationships take longer and so do reputations, both good and bad.
Overall I really don't like where Germany is headed, I don't give 2 fucks about the immigration policy; but I don't like the fact that they've effectively legislated censorship on one hand by fining companies that would not take down posts which contain "illegal speech" (which under that legislation does not actually have to be under violation of current German law, it's enough for the likes of Google or Facebook not to comply to a request to get fined) and now they also seek to fine companies that post "fake".
Fake news aren't a problem, every news organization on all sides of the spectrum publishes 1000's of retractions and corrections on a monthly basis this is how news are written today when you have to battle for clicks.
The EU funds NGOs all over the world quite a few of them would fall under what you would call propaganda and information warfare, propaganda doesn't have to be a lie or fabricated in fact the most effective propaganda and the one most commonly used is not, it's just selective and tailored to fit a narrative, spreading believable lies is considerably harder than spreading convenient selective truths.
I don't see anyone going apeshit in the west about "lies" or well inaccuracies that appear on left wing media from Russian troop build ups that never happened to Israeli soldiers supposedly harvesting organs from Palestinians to near utter fabrications about things like the TTP before and even after most of the articles of the treaty were leaked to pseudo science about GMO's and tons of other garbage. These things happen all the time on daily basis, this isn't something that for some reason plagues the right wing media in the US.
The problem is that today news is aggregated, much of the "fake" news we have today has always existed in effect it was and still tabloids and free dailies, it's the same inaccurate to utterly fabricated crap you would always get between the lochness monster and jesus appeared to me on a toast but now it's just on facebook and reddit.
This isn't a problem; narrative news isn't a problem what is a problem is echo chambers and pre-selected information; if you want to do something about this "fake news" problem don't go after the tabloids; and don't go after facebook for publishing them, make it so that you and everyone else gets exposed to all news sources rather than a feed of what you want to hear or read - that's our problem.
And what scares me the most is that some people are not scared and offended by the fact that their feed is in effect pre-selected based on what they want to consume; in fact they seem to applaud it they are offended when something passes through the filter and they get exposed to something that might not fit their self imposed worldview that gets narrower by the minute.
So yes if you get to a point where 100% of your Facebook feed looks like the cutting floor of the Aftonbladet and you get something that might have an opposing view I understand that I can be unsettling; but instead of crying about that I would rather we all shed a tear about the fact that too many people get their news from a personalized self curated and self censored ministry of truth.
The NSA isn't 1984; how people consume content on the internet today is, with a good dab of fahrenheit 451 in the mix, I hope we don't get to the part of burning books (again) or at this point what would that look like wiping hard drives or shadowbanning tweets?
How does this apply to Facebook posts made by regular users? It's one thing if Facebook's own news feed is peddling fake news, but if regular people choose to post an article on their wall, why is it Facebook's or the government's job to assess the veracity of the article and take it down?
If it wouldn't filter out content and it would just show every bit of content that each user uploads on each of their friends' news feed, it wouldn't be a problem. In Germany if you act as an editor over content (whether it's a script or human) it comes with responsibilities.
And, beside the fact that you can choose if you want the algorithm ordering or just the normal one, if you scroll down enough your news feed you will see all the post, so it's not actually filtering out content, beside for content that break their T&C
Hoaxes seem pretty easy to recognize and target. Does it end with News of the World type hoaxes or does it go further into agenda based biases and misinformation and poor journalism? Or what if a reporter writes a piece based on misinformation from a trusted source in an administration who _today_ has an agenda to peddle?
I think this will prove to be a tricky thing to tackle unless it is well defined and has limited but well defined scope. When Erdogan says some guy in Pennsylvania is behind some new incident in Turkey, is that fake news?
Then why is Breitbart planning to expand into the French and German markets precisely on the eve of French and German elections? Do we think that these websites themselves actually believe they have no political influence, when they seem to be deliberately operating as ad-fueled propaganda outlets for the far-right?
And don't think I'm just being partisan. If World Socialist Web Site was pulling this stuff I wouldn't be happy either.
Obviously most news outlets will try to influence elections in some way, if they have an editorial stance. And sure, sometimes they may have enough influence to actually shift an election. But "fake news" like "FBI agent murdered by Hillary" or Pizzagate nonsense is a blip on the radar compared to all of the other news sources out there. Those hoax stories probably did not tip the US election at all.
There is nothing partisan about the above observations by eli_gottleib. They are true observations. The forceful assertion that the truth is now partisan is exactly part of the same problem that society now faces. A distorted symmetry of blame means that one side of a debate can act in bad faith and lie constantly and people will line up to call anyone who'd question them "partisan."
From this observation alone, we can't distinguish between (a) Breitbart expanding to pitch its values to voters who don't currently hold them (a political motive), (b) Breitbart expanding to serve its content to voters already favourable to its views (an economic motive), or (c) some combination thereof.
edit: to be clear, I think Bannon continues to use his platform to achieve concrete political, electoral political ends and shouldn't be viewed through the lens of a media corporation's metrics (profitability or audience)
Both tell a story of factual event (Obama administration not vetoing a resolution US usually vetoes) and both add opinionated commentary which can't easily (if at all) be verified. Is either of those fake news? I not then you won't catch the thing people complaining about fake news rage about. If yes you are venturing Ministry of Truth territory - state run censorship known all too well for anyone growing up in communist states of Central/Eastern Europe.
Consider, for example, the fake news which came out of Macedonia this past cycle [1]. We can objectively agree it's crap. We can reasonably disagree as to whether the authors were principally motivated by economic or political carrots.
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-news-macedonia-teen-shows-h...
We disagree on what can be objectively known. I don't think one can know another's internal mind state. Motives exist purely in minds.
Fact: Bannon has spoken and written about these desires. Fact: Breitbar publishes crap. Fact(ish): Breitbart's expansion into Germany will likely have a negative impact on its election quality and sociopolitical stability. Not a fact: what motivates the people at Breitbart to do this.
Part of combatting fake news is basing decisions and discussions around what can be objectively agreed upon.
True, maybe the deepest motive for Bannon's stated strategy is that he wants to angrily reject his father's scorn and through world domination (or at least world destabilization) finally earn his love and thus be able to love himself. But that's not really the subject at hand.
"Fake News" is just rebranded propaganda. Systematically trying to convince the public of lies is bad, regardless of motive. But we can also see clearly the first order motives of the people behind most of this current wave of propaganda even if we can't follow a chain of causality back to the deepest motives of human nature.
But! As a society or a culture, it is smart to make sure whoever participates in your internal and cultural debate is not an outside force and participates in both directions: they should have an editor that has will defend their editorial choices. Somebody that lives in the same country and is part of culture.
This is more about facebook wanting to be both Reddit and the NYT. Either allow it all or have your editioral choices made by a local resident that like a newspaper will be available for questions.
You are just being partisan. The notion that somehow fake news is a thing, that it misleads people, or that it affects elections is ridiculous. It's an excuse for losing an election and avoiding blame.
Fake news has been a part of our media since forever. Go read the tabloids. People enjoy that stuff and that's all it is, entertainment. Would you ban tabloids from newsstands too?
I just don't think the two sides are equivalent here. AFAIK, there is no far-left fake news website with the same revenue or audience numbers as the far-right has right now. The far-right is winning. If you side with them, go ahead and be happy, but I don't think I've said anything false by merely noting that they're succeeding in their stated goals of making money and spreading their views.
>Fake news has been a part of our media since forever. Go read the tabloids. People enjoy that stuff and that's all it is, entertainment. Would you ban tabloids from newsstands too?
I'm not advocating banning anything. I'm advocating that ordinary journalistic standards should apply to anything which markets itself as journalism.
I think you are very wrong about "far right" or even "right" winning. People vote for them more often than in the past because their narrative resonates with what people find important at this point in time but they don't get anywhere close to fair share of media, let alone win.
Why is this a competition you want to win? Seems like a race to the bottom.
> I'm advocating that ordinary journalistic standards should apply to anything which markets itself as journalism.
There are no universal "journalistic standards". There are standard to which specific outlets hold themselves to and that's great, but that's hardly an argument to holding others to the same standard.
I have no expectation that The Sun holds itself to the same standard as The New York Times and frankly, I wouldn't want them to.
Who said I want to win?
>There are no universal "journalistic standards". There are standard to which specific outlets hold themselves to and that's great, but that's hardly an argument to holding others to the same standard.
Well, if I might put forward a positive program, I think that publishing falsehoods under cover of journalism, in a way that harms people's lives, should be a civil offense which the victim can sue for. Let the lawyers duke it out in court: not every case will be ruled the right way, but being sued is itself a penalty that will discourage sleaze.
We already have a moral standard for when "fake" speech stops being free: when it is both false and harmful. I don't think we'll destroy the freedom of Western societies by expanding that to cover, "both bullshit and harmful", and we'll deter quite a lot of genuine harm.
Poorly written hoaxes? Yes. Did they contribute votes to trump? Yes.
Could he have won without them? I have no idea. It's likely impossible to say how big of a factor they were in the election.
There's a large population in the United States that revels in being anti-intellectual. They actively play into the "dumb-redneck" stereotype. They wear it as a badge of honor. I'm doing my best not to talk down here - I have spent time with these people (dated a few of them even.) Outside of a political discussion where they have been primed to be "outraged" at being called stupid, I have never heard them be upset about their lack of knowledge and education.
It's why they related so well to George W. Bush. He talked to them at their level, and they loved it.
I have heard amazingly absurd things from them. Like "The south was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons before they lost the civil war."
Many of them truly believe that the Clinton family has founded and runs a CP ring. Oh, and they regularly (like once or twice a year) have affairs with, and then murder, their assistants.
It's absurd - but they believe it, and they vote it.
¹ say, drugs or issues with education ² say, War On Drugs or American education system
while I don't dismiss your concern, I just wanted to point out that this is not some sort of wholly-unprecedented government authority.
The communication to its people is the one of the most important power a ruler has. Around 50 years ago, governments could influence their nations with state-owned mass media such as tv and radio. Then, private tv and radio came, then the Internet, they lost control but not much, they still could control or subtly influence communication in large part.
Now with FB, it seems that they lost any control and new right-wing parties are way more experienced in employing social media for their needs. Instead of pushing millions into social media and government-driven bot armies, they whine and call for censorship.
I think FB won't do anything, what can Germany do? FB's power is much bigger than Germany's government and legislative. Which is a disturbing thought.
Anyone can start a 'news site', either using one of the established blogging platforms or by renting some space on the 'net and running their own site. That this avenue is mostly taken by what is considered 'the political right wing' is not surprising, given that the majority of established media in a large part of Europe (which is where you'll find the largest proliferation of 'alternative' media) is considered to be on the 'left side' of the political spectrum. In some countries this development has gone so far that a majority of people don't consider established media to be a reliable and trustworthy source of news, e.g. Sweden [1]. Some of the 'alternative' media strive to uphold traditional standards of journalism, often as a reaction to the demise of those traditions in the established media. Others just try to push their message using whatever they think will stick, standards and traditions be damned. The former are a valuable addition to the media landscape and could prove vital in the sight of extending governmental control of media. The latter are at best a nuisance, at worst a factor in destabilising society. While they may consider themselves to be 'patriotic citizens defending their freedom', they only serve to reinforce stereotypes of whatever political movement they represent.
I for one am glad that the 'net makes it possible to publish outside of governmental control. I also know enough not to blindly trust whatever is published, be it through 'alternative' or 'established' media. In the 'fight' against 'fake news' the question soon rises who gets to define which news is 'fake' and which is 'true'. The government ('ministry of truth'...)? The established media (whose political bent was the original reason for alternative media to arise in the first place)? Who will watch the watchers?
[1] http://www.svt.se/kultur/ny-studie-halften-lockas-inte-av-tr... (in Swedish)
I know why politicians don't care about the consequences of such actions, but I'm always surprised of the support here on HN for such actions, when the horrible, slippery-slope consequences should be obvious. Well...I do know of one reason, but I won't go down that political rabbit-hole.
(Or choose some of the other restrictions that Germany places on speech)
I suppose the ultimate sanction from Facebook's perspective would be to null-route any traffic from or to Germany. No news, no fines!
Losing 40 million users ( one-fortieth of their userbase ) would be a lot less painful to the company than what Germany's leaders would receive from their electorate.
Based on the slippery slope metaphor alone, the most you can say is that scenario #1 may lead to scenario #2. But the slippery slope is very often lazily and fallaciously used as the evidence or proof that scenario #2 will happen.
Now, just to point out, but "fake news" at this point has tipped elections and, in at least one case, led a man to go shoot up a pizzeria.
I like free speech as much as the next guy, but Germany has hate-speech and incitement-to-violence laws for a reason. In addition, if Facebook is going to work as a de facto monopoly, it should be treated with de jure public utility status. It's not a start-up competing against five other social networks anymore: it's the first or second most-trafficked website on Earth, and the single most common news source for internet users on Earth.
If there really were five different social networks with their own approaches to fake news and lively competition for users, I wouldn't favor state action until the line of incitement is crossed. As it is, Facebook holds a monopoly.
Those already show how difficult good rulings on these things can be, and they are IMHO a lot simpler than "fake news" since they don't involve truth-finding by courts, or even worse enforcement agencies, on the same level.
I'm really curious to see how the press is going to react to this. It doesn't make sense to apply these rules to an aggregator/sharing platform and not to news sources themselves, and as fashionable as it is to hate on Facebook they really should not want high fines (or even any extra state judgement) on "reporting the wrong thing".
https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&...
Note that Germany has a longstanding law against one particular kind of "fake" information - holocaust denial. For obvious reasons. Germany takes saying "never again" to Fascism very seriously. The notorious "protocols of the elders of Zion" is in some way the original "fake news".
No, Hearst and Pulitzer's "yellow journalism" was fake news of substantial political impact that predates the Protocols forgery.
They knew what the meant by Freedom Of Speech, and it without question included political fake news. It's not something they overlooked, it was a regular part of the political fabric of the time. And contrary to what the current panic is saying, it all worked out OK.
There's accrediting organizations for journalists that's kind of a start.
Legislating what people believe isnt solving the problem
I don't think this statement is true. I googled "example of fake news" and the first article gave a good counter-argument: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-fake-news-stori...
> One example of fake news is this anti-Hillary Clinton story from the faux Denver Guardian, which declared in all caps: “FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE.”
> Everything about the article was made up, from the city where the crime supposedly occurred (there is no Walkerville, Maryland), to the quote from “Walkerville Police Chief Pat Frederick.” (A town with a similar spelling ― Walkersville ― does exist, but doesn’t even have a police department.)
This is not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of simple fact.
An organisation with the reach and revenues of facebook, which has become a de facto conduit for news on a scale unparalleled before, does have a responsibility to civil society to not corrode it from the inside by acting as a giant megaphone for completely made up crap.
By this it could be said that the algorithm acts as an editor over content and in Germany this kind of filtering/moderation/censoring has laws and responsibilities.
The operative problem here is that Facebook has a monopoly or near-monopoly on being the platform. Monopolies come with responsibilities.
Labeling it as fake news is too broad, hence new-speak. Call it what it is 'libel'
Anecdote is not proof, but please recall the gentleman that brought an assault rifle to a pizzeria to investigate (widely circulated, even by the son of President-elect Trump's National Security Avisor [1]) claims that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of the back of it [2].
It should be obvious to the stupidest person that Hillary Clinton is not running a child sex ring, let alone out of the back of some random DC pizzeria. How is it, then, that this person came to believe that and acted on it?
1: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/05/politics/mike-flynn-jr-son-piz... 2: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/12/04/d-c-...
edit: don't particularly care about downvotes, but to those of your downvoting this, you may want to introspect why you did so.
To this comment, we've digressed from the Facebook/Germany point. It's complicated. To your point, was Clinton supposed to pursue libel across ten thousand fly-by-night websites cross-sourcing libel (sometimes across jurisdictions where it was not practical to pursue them)? It is a judicial DoS, in a sense. A legal system is a hackable set of rules, and someone did that in the US election, and I think Germany is smart to try to prevent a similar result domestically (though I am not sure if fining FB $.5M per incident is effective or ethical).
The UK has had to deal with fake news for centuries; it's called the tabloid press.
- Clear fake news ("sgift lives in ..." and a false value)
- Clear true news ("sgift lives in ..." and a correct value)
- Opinion
- Politician X has reptilian DNA.
- Candidate Y wants to instate communism.
- Protesters are hired actors by Z.I'm not sure I follow.
(I'm being heavily sarcastic. Most posters on this thread are being heavily America-centric, and don't seem to quite get that other countries have different standards rooted in their own histories.)
Democratic society relies on us being able to agree about basic facts. The press used to do that for us, however imperfectly. Google and Facebook have taken all their revenues and also are major conduits of news, and yet have corrupted this function of the press. If they want the revenues they should accept the responsibility too.
Given the quality of "mainstream" press recently, I don't really see how they corrupted it, unless you mean the corruption then spread onto everyone. Ad revenue in general, on the other hand, is something I'd blame for much of the corruption.
That said, we're talking only about broad criteria for news stories - there's no way Zuckerberg or German government could do fine judgement on news stories. Asking for that is opening yourself to be effectively DDoSed by sheer volume of publications these days. This fine itself seems less like censorship, and more like wanting the ability to coerce Facebook in other areas by threatening them with fake news fines.
It's gotten significantly worse over the last 10-20 years, at the same time as the googles and facebooks of this world grew. I do meant that the corruption has in fact spread to everyone.
Did something horrible happen to the mainstream German press?
You shouldn't be trusting either.
And as TeMPOral points out, I'm not saying I trust them with my life - but I do trust them more as an arbiter of factual reality.
After all, one of them is a democratically elected institution with strong rules about accountability and transparency. The other is a private company ruled absolutely by one individual and with a board member who's on the record saying he doesn't believe democracy is compatible with freedom.
"Any forum / website must expose some API for the suppression of fake news to the central authorities."
They already have read access (PRISM, Snowden, etc), now they will get delete access.
I find that funny and tragic at the same time.
so the judicial system already has the "ministry of truth" responsibility, whether or not that bothers you
Looks like Germany can't fully shake off its fascist past.
Maybe we should withdraw from NATO. I'm sure plenty of Ossies aren't above making a euro helping Wessies improve their Russian.