That's crazy. Facebook should absolutely take the government to court over this. They're probably doing this because Google and Facebook have already agreed to a lot of things which may have seemed "reasonable" but this is really taking it too far. It's not Facebook's responsibility to verify the truthfulness of all the posts on its site.
On the other hand, perhaps this forces Facebook to give up on being a "news platform", too, and not just a social network, which wouldn't be a terrible thing to happen.
Facebook seems to be pretty good at verifying the "no-nudity-containingness" of all posts on its site, so I can see why someone could get the impression that they should also be able to react to reports of "fake" or libellous posts.
I'm somewhat doubtful that there'd be a legal basis to go after news that's simply "fake", because afaik you can't even get at the publishers of such drivel. But defamatory posts are probably fair game.
Now that may appear like European crazy talk to American eyes, but just consider that Facebook is very much liable for some content in the US as well, namely copyright infringement that they don't block "expeditiously". This proposal seems to apply more or less the same mechanisms as the DMCA to a different category of "illegal speech", and I see now reason why copyright should be better protected than the democratic system.
>Facebook should absolutely take the government to court over this
This is not a contract between two corporations.
A private corporation should NOT sue a government for creating a new law. As long as it's legally feasible, Germany should do whatever it deems necessary to its own sovereignty and interests.
Oh no. It's about time that Facebook ramps up its user service. I have notified Facebook of countless violations, including calls to literally burn refugees, and all my complaints were discarded.
No psychological support even though the employees have to deal with more vile stuff than even 4chan, only 14.4 seconds (!) to deal with a single complaint (2k complaints/8h workday). No wonder Facebook is fucked up.
What we're seeing, not just with FB but also with Twitter and Google, is the usual capitalism ideology of privatizing profits and externalizing losses - in this case the "loss" is the damage done to victims of propaganda, hate crime and "fake news". The "profit" is the amount of money that the companies save on actual customer support (which is my main complaint against Google).
On the other hand, perhaps this forces Facebook to give up on being a "news platform", too, and not just a social network, which wouldn't be a terrible thing to happen.