On Thursday 1 June, the European Commissioner for Justice, Vera Jourova, described the results of the second evaluation of the Code of Conduct set in place to fight hate speech peddled on the Internet as encouraging. In May 2016, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Google undertook to examine, in under 24 hours, most of the valid notifications of illegal hate speech and take down this content or block access to it, if necessary, on the basis of the national legislations transposing European law.
Companies are now taking down twice as much hate speech content and more quickly than they were six months ago, the Commissioner said. This is an important step in the right direction and shows that the self-regulatory approach can work, if everyone does their bit, she added.
One year on from its adoption, the Code of Conduct on fighting hate speech online has seen major progress, the Commission explains: on average, in 59% of cases, companies such as Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter have responded to notifications of hate speech by removing the content. This is more than twice the level of 28% seen six months earlier, according to the Commission.
The number of notifications examined within 24 hours has risen from 40% to 51% over the same six-month period. Facebook, however, is the only company that has fully met the target of examining most notifications received within one day, the Commission reports.
Compared to the situation six months previously, the IT companies are processing notifications from citizens in the same way as those from organisations using reliable communication channels. However, there are differences and the overall content removal outcomes remain lower if the notification came from the public.
The Commission is, however, maintaining a number of reservations: the monitoring exercise has shown that although Facebook always sends users feedback on how their notifications were dealt with, practices differ considerably between IT companies. The quality of the feedback on the reason for the decision is an area in which progress has still to be made.
The Commissioner plans to discuss the Code of Conduct in Luxembourg on 8 June, at the Council of Justice Ministers of the EU. In particular, she is counting on support of the member states to consolidate the Code of Conduct and extend it to other companies. She also wishes to lay greater emphasis on work to improve feedback to users reporting illegal content.
She also hopes to take advantage of this meeting to discuss with the member states how they implement legislative initiatives, for instance on hate speech. A European source explained last week that questions would be put to Germany, as the Commission has some misgivings regarding the country's law on hate speech. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)