EU is dissatisfied with social media’s approach to hate messages

Věra Jourová, European Commissioner for Justice, among others, is not satisfied with the way social media companies deal with tackling hate messages on their platforms. According to the commissioner, they do not respond quickly enough to these kinds of messages.

At the end of May, the EU, together with a number of tech companies, drafted rules of conduct against hate messages on the internet. It stated that the companies must remove this type of content from their platforms within a maximum of 24 hours. The Financial Times writes that a recent report shows that companies, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, handle 40 percent of the 600 notifications of such messages within the agreed timeframe. That percentage rises to eighty percent after 48 hours, with YouTube responding the fastest and Twitter the slowest.

Jourová is not satisfied with these results, according to the newspaper. She says: “If Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft are to convince me and the ministers that a non-legislative approach will work, they must act quickly and show more commitment in the coming months.” The director of civil rights organization EDRi is critical of the code of conduct. He believes it is a “limp attempt to distract from the current situation.” By this he means that European legislation in the field of hate speech is too unclear.

The newspaper adds that the words of the European Commissioner follow reports of fake news on major online platforms. In Germany, the discussion about unwanted content on social media is also playing out. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others, was recently indicted there for failing to act against hate messages on Facebook.