Germany's already strict online hate speech law is about to become even more severe. On Thursday, the country's federal government passed a new provision (via TechCrunch) that will require companies like Twitter and Facebook to forward suspected illegal content to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Germany's equivalent of the FBI. The law also obligates those companies to pass on some of the poster's personal information, including their IP address.
The provision is an amendment to Germany's Network Enforcement Act -- known as NetzDG, for short. Previously, the main requirement of the law was that companies delete potentially illegal content. NetzDG was already controversial when the government first passed it in 2017. At the time, the Human Rights Watch argued that it overly incentivized online platforms to take down objectionable content due to the steep fines they could face for failing to do so. In some instances, companies can be fined as much as €50 million (roughly $56 million) for failing to comply with the law.
