‘Social media better adhere to rules of conduct remove hate messages’

Social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are more likely to remove hate messages within a 24-hour period, as laid down in previous rules of conduct. This is according to an evaluation by the EU, which has been seen by the Reuters news agency.

European Commissioner Věra Jourová said at a meeting of an EU group to combat racism and xenophobia that tech companies are all responding more quickly to reports of illegal hate messages, Reuters reports. For example, the companies would have removed content in almost 60 percent of all reports on average, compared to December when the percentage was still below 30 percent.

According to Jourová, there are still differences between the companies’ results, but ‘it could objectively be said that all companies show improvement’. For example, Facebook responded to hate messages within 24 hours in 58 percent of the cases, compared to 50 percent in December. Twitter was also faster and dealt with 39 percent instead of the previous 23.5 percent. YouTube showed a slowdown and handled 42.6 percent of notifications. In December, that percentage was still at 60.8 percent.

A year ago in the European Union, the Commission established a code of conduct on the removal of hate speech content from the Internet. In December of last year it appeared that the EU was not satisfied with the approach and in April reports came out that regulation in this area is being considered. Last week it was announced that the EU has approved rules that still have to pass the European Parliament before they become definitive.