F2F Class Notes 17th March (Tanya)

Vocabulary

Fine – an amount of money you have to pay because you broke the law (=financial penalty)

e.g. I drove through a red light, so now I have to pay a fine.

Content – 内容 what something is about

e.g. What’s the content of this article? This article is about social media.

To crack down – to become stricter about something

e.g. The governments is cracking down on drunk driving.

Strict – 严格

e.g. Some teachers are very strict and they want absolute silence in class.

hate speech – hateful words

e.g. The internet contains a lot of hate speech.

Listen to the recording and understand the text.

What is the proposed new law?

Social media websites in Germany could be in for fines of up to 50 million euros for removing illegal content too slowly. The German government has decided to crack down on the darker side of online content, including hate speech, fake news and other illegal material. Under the proposed new law, social media companies would be given seven days to delete content flagged as illegal, or receive a heavy financial penalty. Any content said to be “clearly criminal” would have to be removed within 24 hours. Germany’s justice minister quoted research which suggested Twitter deletes only one per cent of the hate speech it is told about by users, and Facebook, 39 per cent.