EU Steps For Fighting Online Hate Speech – Possible Censorship Of Social Media?

1. Why is the EU calling for policy measures (including censorship) against social media?

   As of April 2017, fighting online hate speech has been prioritised at EU level further to several terrorist attacks (e.g., in London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels). Critics have argued that such attacks were to a great extent assisted by the intensive use of social media by terrorist groups to instigate violence and radicalise people, especially youngsters.

   In this context, heated debates have taken place at EU level on the prevention and removal of online hate speech and the enactment of legislation that would define a common approach thereto. Furthermore, a number of views expressed in the European Parliament favoured censorship and public control of social media outlets.1 These views are shared by the British Prime Minister Theresa May, who recently called for new EU regulations and international agreements intended to "deprive the extremists of their safe spaces online".2

2. What is hate speech?

   There is no universally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes hate speech. Nevertheless, specific guidance for defining the concept has been provided by certain competent EU bodies.3 As such, "hate speech" is meant to cover all forms of expressions that spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance, including by reference to a non-exhaustive list of personal characteristics or statuses (e.g., race, colour, language, religion or beliefs, nationality or national or ethnic origin, descent, age, disability, sex, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation). Consequently, when grounded on these personal characteristics, hate speech may also target data that can easily qualify as "personal data" (e.g. age).

3. The EU's tentative steps towards fighting the growing hate speech challenge

   The official plenary debate in the European Parliament on April 2017 hosted a robust discussion between its members on how best to tackle the proliferation of online hate speech, with a host of proposals being put forward, including:

   Censorship or public control of social media; Imposing significant fines on media providers; or Fostering "media literacy" (i.e., the ability to access, analyse, evaluate, and create media)4. In contrast, the members of the European Commission seem to favour a more peaceful approach, by cooperating with the IT industry and developing media literacy so that young people know how to critically assess information.5

   In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2016, the European Commission intensified its work on fighting hate speech - a campaign initiated several years ago with the adoption of the Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA. Following consultations with the leading social media companies (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft), it published a Code of Conduct aimed at fighting online hate speech.6 This Code of Conduct includes a series of public commitments, voluntarily accepted by these four companies, as follows: (i) review of valid removal notifications for hate speech in less than 24 hours; (ii) removal or disabling access to such content, if necessary; (iii) continuous development of internal procedures; and (iv) staff training. A recent evaluation of the Code of Conduct, carried out by NGOs and public bodies in 24 EU countries (including...