Is criminalizing fake news the way forward?
German lawmakers have called for legal action against the production and distribution of fake news. But digital rights groups warned of the harrowing effects it could have online, including censorship.
Politicians, news consumers and social media entrepreneurs have turned their attention to the subject of fake news, in large part due to its alleged influence during the US presidential election in November,
with headlines that included prominent Democrats - Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman among them - running a child sex ring out of a Washington pizza shop and the pope endorsing Donald Trump.
However, a group of psychologists in 2012 had already published a study on the persistence of misinformation, warning that it could have "fairly alarming implications in a democracy."
"At an individual level, misinformation about health issues -
for example, unwarranted fears regarding vaccinations or unwarranted trust in alternative medicine - can do a lot of damage," said the study's lead author Stephan Lewandowsky, an Australian psychologist at the University of Bristol.
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While social media giant Facebook created a system to flag "false news" stories, authorities have struggled with how to approach the growing momentum of misinformation online.
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German lawmaker Patrick Sensburg, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), said in an interview with DW on Tuesday that the government needs to consider "ratcheting up the statutory offenses" against fake news producers and
"take action against the people who run these websites."
Several German politicians have called for legal measures to combat the growing phenomenon online, with Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) saying "we must stand together" against fake news and "social [media] bots."
Sensburg said such legal measures are not about "curtailing freedom of expression," and instead
aim to prevent efforts to "destabilize the media landscape and the population's trust in the state."
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Is criminalizing fake news the way forward? | Europe | DW.COM | 14.12.2016
http://www.dw.com/en/is-criminalizing-fake-news-the-way-forward/a-36768028