Germany, France begin legal fight against fake news

French President Emmanuel Macron announced in a speech this week that he plans to have a law in place by the end of the year that will ban fake news from elections. The announcement comes days after a new German law went into effect Monday that requires social media companies like Facebook and Twitter remove hate speech and fake news from their platforms within 24 hours of being flagged or face fines up to €50 million.

Why it matters: European governments don't share America's romantic view of technology, and have spent the past year aggressively going after U.S. tech companies for data collection, privacy, fake news and antitrust violations. On top of individual countries' laws and regulations to fight fake news, the E.U. itself created a high-level group to "advise on policy initiatives to counter fake news and the spread of disinformation online."