Germany — Germany now says if Facebook refuses to deal with "fake news" in a timely manner, it will fine the social media platform €500,000 (around $525,000) for each false or hate speech item it fails to remove within 24 hours.

Thomas Oppermann, chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party, suggests a strict law with concurrent stiff penalty might be the best method of combating the plethora of "fake news" now apparently flooding the interwebs.

"Facebook did not avail itself of the opportunity to regulate the issue of complaint management itself," Oppermann told Der Spiegel in an interview Friday. "Now market dominating platforms like Facebook will be legally required to build a legal protection office in Germany that is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."

According to Deutsche Welle, this would allow putative 'victims' of fake news or hate speech to contact Facebook and request action be taken.

"If, after appropriate examination, Facebook does not delete the offending message within 24 hours," Oppermann continued, "it should expect individual fines of up to 500,000 euros ($523,320)."

Germany's announcement comes on the heels of Facebook's formally announcing its newest plan to deal with the same "fake news" issue — the company will partner with adamantly left-leaning organizations Snopes, Politifact, FactCheck.org, the Associated Press, and ABC News to vet and label items "disputed." Corporate media largely lauded that announcement, ignoring entirely the distinct potentiality for the effort to amount to blatant censorship of all ideas not in lock step with the neoliberal establishment.

All of this, despite Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declaring shortly after the U.S. presidential election,

"Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other."

Zuckerberg and Facebook quickly changed their tune when it became clear the Democrat establishment wished to target alternative, independent, and right-leaning media organizations to shoulder the blame of its own shortcomings in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency.

While corporate media presstitutes praised fealty to Hillary Clinton, alternative outlets reported on the contents of documents leaked to Wikileaks concerning the former secretary of state — including collusion by those same 'reporters' with Clinton's campaign.

Indeed, though analysts first decried the idea 'fake news' or misinformation swayed the election in favor of Donald Trump, hysteria amongst Clintonites and NeverTrump Republicans spread like wildfire online as the volatile situation in the United States threatened to explode into outright conflict. Now, a growing number of Electoral College electors from both sides of the aisle have declared they will not vote — or cast their votes for Trump — until an investigation into Russian election interference can be performed.