To fight hate speech, Germany has approved a new law that will impose heavy fines on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Google, YouTube and other social media companies if they fail to remove hate content in time, according to a report from BBC News.

The legislation, labeled as Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz or NetzDG, is designed to require social media platforms with more than 2 million users to remove ‘obviously illegal’ posts containing hate speech or other criminal content within 24 hours.

Failing to comply could result in a fine of up to €5 million for the individual and €50 million for the companies.

Meanwhile, the social media companies will get a seven- day deadline to take down posts that are not obviously unlawful.

The new law will come into effect in October this year.

The new legislation comes after several high-profile incidents of fake news and criminal hate speech being spread on social media sites in Germany.

Justice Minister Heiko Mass, who supervised the legislation, told the German parliament that online hate crimes had surged around 300% in the past few years.

“Our experience has shown that unfortunately, social media companies do not improve their procedures without political pressure,” Mass was quoted as saying by BBC News.

Law Could Damage Free Speech

The new law has been criticized by organizations representing digital companies, consumers, and journalists. Critics believe that this new German law could damage free speech.

“Many of the violations covered by the bill are highly dependent on context, context which platforms are in no position to assess,” David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, David Kaye, told BBC News.

“The obligations placed upon private companies to regulate and take down content raises concern with respect to freedom of expression,” Kaye added.

Volker Tripp, who leads the Digital Society Association, told Business Insider, “It is the wrong approach to make social networks into a content police.”

Facebook and Hate Content

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and other companies have been trying hard to combat fake news and offensive content.

The social networking giant has added 4,500 new workers to its team that monitor posts on the site. The team is now removing around 66,000 posts a week, according to Facebook.

In addition to human staff, Facebook is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to spot hate and terror content on its site.