Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 9
Posts 1 - 9

Germany Tells Sites to Delete Hate or Pay Up

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | Germany has the strictest policies when it comes to illegalizing slanderous, threatening, and extremist language from public spaces. Germany has just passed a law that allows them to fine Facebook as much as 57 million dollars if they do not remove offensive content quickly enough from the platform. While some may say this is censorship , German lawmakers claim that respectful online encounters are a necessity for free speech to thrive. Facebook is now working on improving the flagging process for offensive material and are also using artificial intelligence to remove fake news.
Image Description | Blurry man looking at a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

Daily Report: Facebook Struggles With Being Responsible

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 18.4.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, law, pornography, threat
Summary | Facebook and other social media have a huge problem with inappropriate or criminal content being posted to their platforms. Recently, a man in Ohio posted a video to Facebook of him shooting and killing a man. It took Facebook two hours to take it down. So far, artificial intelligence algorithms have been very successful in detecting nudity/pornography and blocking it but finding violent content is still very much dependent on user action.
Image Description | Getty image of Mark Zuckerberg biting his lips.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

Tech industry slowly rallies behind Apple in iPhone fight

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 19.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, Google, law, privacy, smartphone, threat
Summary | The FBI had issues a court order to Apple to hack into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists. When Apple declined, other tech magnates like Google and Facebook sided with them saying that tech companies cannot be ordered to compromise their customers' privacy by the governement. Allowing this to happen now would set a problematic precedent for the future.
Image Description | Portrait of Mark Zuckerberg.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

Facebook Groups Act as Weapons Bazaars for Militias

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 6.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | Facebook, law, marketing, threat
Summary | Since Facebook has enabled the transmission of payments via the site, it has seen an increase of commerce on the platform. Most worryingly, many Middle Eastern Facebook group pages advertise and apparently sell fire arms (everything from pistols over machine guns to missiles) via Facebook. Facebook has forbidden the sale of fire arms on their platform but they have to rely on users to report such cases.
Image Description | Images of the weapons on sale on Facebook, ISIS fighters, and refugee boats.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

Die Integration von Syrern funktioniert - über Facebook

(The integration of Syrians works - on Facebook)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 12.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | digitized education, diversity, Facebook, law
Summary | The Syrian community in Germany is excellently connected on Facebook. Hundreds of thousands of people are joined in Facebook groups and share their knowledge about asylum-seeking procedures, how to get cheap train tickets, and short video classes about complicated grammatical constructions. The Syrians are pooling their knowledge of all aspects of German culture and are succeding with the integration into the society. Even video comedians explain cultural differences humoristically so that they are getting more and more German viewers. Lately, they have even helped the German police find a terrorist posing as a refugee by sharing his image in their Facebook groups.
Image Description | Screenshots of the Facebook groups.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

Das Monster lebt

(The monster is alive)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, threat
Summary | Facebook is hiring thousands of new employees to battle cyberbullying on their platform and to remove offensive material as quickly as possible. But a couple thousand are not very many people to combat wrongdoings of 2 billion users. German politicians are trying to make Facebook comply with local laws about removing illegal content from the internet but Facebook is nowhere near fulfilling those requirements.
Image Description | A photograph of a man holding a smartphone showing the Facebook logo and the face of a monster.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s), smartphone

Tailandia logra censurar en Facebook un vídeo de su rey

(Thailand was able to censor a video of its king on Facebook)

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Newspaper | El País
Date | 19.5.2017
Language | Spanish
Country | Spain
Topic Tags | censorship, Facebook, law
Summary | Thailand asked Facebook to withdraw 131 pages that contain "illegal" content (i.e. pages that violate strict laws concerning the royal family). Indeed, the royal family should not be criticized. One of the videos posted online showed the current king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, displaying his tattooed back and arms. Facebook accepted to withdraw the illegal content.
Image Description | Photograph of a Facebook profile with the picture of Mark Zuckerberg.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

Germany threatens to fine social media companies €50m for hate speech and fake news

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 14.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, fake news, law, politics
Summary | Germany is threatening to sue Facebook should it not do something against abuse and fake news on its platform. Germany has very strong defamation laws so Facebook needs to regulate its content if they want to stay in Germany. A new mechanism to flag fake news has been developed.
Image Description | Reuters image of many Facebook logos under a magnifying glass and a portrait of Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s)

2016: the year Facebook became the bad guy

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 12.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | 2016 has been a bad year for Facebook. Many scandals surrounded the company. It became clear that Facebook is now longer just an advertizing machine with access to almost 2 billion people world-wide but that it also curates what news media most of these people perceive - whether Facebook wants to accept this or not. They no longer just have to deal with sensoring nudity and human rights violations content but also fake news. While Zuckerberg denies that the fake news bubbles have influenced the presidential elections, his company at the same time makes tons of money selling exactly this persuasive power to advertisers.
Image Description | The Facebook reaction emojis and dislike (thumb-down) emojis, glasses in front of like buttons, and a man holding a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

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