Google bosses face £4m fine for not taking down hate videos (in Germany)

Memo to UK government: Why can’t we do this too?

BOSSES of Google, Facebook and Twitter will face huge personal fines in Germany if they fail to remove hate speech online.

In stark contrast to Britain’s response to the problem, the social media companies will be fined up to £42.7million if they do not remove offensive material swiftly.

And executives could be hit with individual fines of up to £4.2million under the crackdown approved after Germany grew frustrated with internet giants failing to clean up their act.

While the UK Government has demanded the firms take urgent action against jihadists posting dangerous material online, it has stopped short of legal action.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet said: ‘Hate crimes that are not effectively combated and prosecuted pose a great danger to the peaceful cohesion of a free, open and democratic society.’

Justice minister Heiko Maas added: ‘There should be just as little tolerance for criminal rabble rousing on social networks as on the street.’

The crackdown comes amid a growing global backlash against American technology giants profiting from adverts placed alongside hate speech put online by Islamic State sympathisers, Holocaust deniers and white supremacists.

The issue was highlighted after the Westminster terror attack, when a quick internet search revealed copies of a terror manual circulating on YouTube and Twitter. The manual showed fanatics how to use a car as a ‘tool of war’, in the same way that killer Khalid Masood did.

Theresa May said yesterday: ‘It’s very important that we do see action from the companies. We will continue to press them to make sure, because as we know, material on the internet can have an impact when it is seen by other people.

‘The Government has already spent quite a lot of time talking with the companies about what they can do and what we think they should be doing. They have made some progress.

‘There’s a significant number of pieces of material taken down from the internet through the counterterrorism internet referral unit, something like a quarter of a million pieces since 2010 now.’

The Prime Minister added: ‘We continue to talk to the companies. The Home Secretary met them last week. There is more they could and should be doing and we will be continuing to encourage them to do more.’ So far, the technology firms have agreed to create ‘digital fingerprints’ of offensive pictures so they can be taken down automatically when they are posted online.

The Solicitor General, Robert Buckland, has also warned that Google should face prosecution under the Terrorism Act unless it removes online hate speech effectively.

But Britain’s efforts fall a long way short of the decisive action in Germany, which already has some of the world’s toughest hate speech laws and imprisons people for denying the Holocaust or inciting hatred against minorities.

In 2015, Germany got internet firms to sign a pledge to delete hate speech within 24 hours of it being identified, but the government found they have broken their promises. Facebook deleted 39 per cent of the content deemed criminal, while Twitter only removed 1 per cent, Mr Maas said.

Under the new rules, the technology companies will have 24 hours to delete or block obviously criminal content and seven days to deal with cases that are less clear cut.

They will also have to tell people who file complaints about content how they have handled the case.

More than 260 companies have pulled their advertising from Google’s YouTube website after a newspaper investigation found blue-chip brands were being featured alongisde videos by IS sympathisers and white supremacists.

The adverts channel money directly to the extremists, as well as into Google’s coffers.

‘Great danger to a peaceful society’