Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has exchanged views with French President Emmanuel Macron on dealing with hate on the Internet. At the heart of the deliberations at the Paris Elysée Palace was a bill on Friday, according to which the operators of online networks delete calls for hate within 24 hours after a complaint. In Germany, a similar requirement already exists.
Macron had announced the law against hatred in the net after a series of anti-Semitic incidents. This is to remove calls for discrimination based on "race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability" from the Internet.
In Germany since January 2018, the so-called Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) in force, which is considered immature. It requires operators of social networks to delete obviously criminal content within 24 hours after receiving a user complaint. For systematic violations fines of up to 50 million euros.
One and a half hours Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has met with President Macron. He wants to be more active against hatred on the net and sees Facebook in the #dpareporter pic.twitter.com/wev5l4Y0G4 duty
- Julia Naue (@NaueJulia) 10 May 2019Criticism from one of the Facebook co-founders
Before the meeting between Macron and Zuckerberg, the French government also proposed the establishment of an authority in each EU country to monitor transparency in online networks. Macron and Zuckerberg had met in Paris in May 2018, shortly after a hearing Zuckerberg before European parliamentarians.
Facebook was recently criticized, among other things because of massive security margins in user data. One of the co-founders, who, however, since 2007 is no longer in the company, called on Thursday for smashing the Internet giant.
In a guest post for The New York Times, Chris Hughes called on the US government to split the Instagram and WhatsApp services away from Facebook. Facebook was too big and his boss Zuckerberg too powerful, wrote Hughes.