The EU Commission and the Board for Digital Services have announced the revised Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online, which has been integrated into the EU’s online censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA) regulatory framework (as one of the voluntary instruments).
Forbes reported, the code was signed by Dailymotion, Facebook, Instagram, Jeuxvideo.com, LinkedIn, Microsoft-hosted consumer services, Snapchat, Rakuten Viber, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube, the Commission announced.
The document has its roots in 2016, when Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube agreed to join, which was two years later followed by Instagram, Snapchat and Dailymotion, and then through 2021 by others.
The content that’s to be targeted is that which either the EU or member countries criminalize as hate speech.
A number of organizations (“Monitoring Reporters” – non-profits) in different EU member-countries are tasked with evaluating how these tech companies implement the code and live up to the commitments from it. Brussels describes the code as “facilitating” compliance with the DSA.
At the same time, it “may be considered as an appropriate risk mitigation measure” for those tech companies that the DSA designates as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Search Engines (VLOSEs).
The Commission and the Board now have recommendations for the signatories of the revised voluntary code, in order to implement it to the EU’s satisfaction: one is to include information about the outcome of the measures they take in the companies’ reporting.
Next, they are expected to provide additional data regarding “hate speech” on their platforms, and this is supposed to go into the recommendation algorithms and how they affected the spread of content before it was removed.
The reports are also expected to have data concerning countries individually that explains how “hate speech” is internally classified, relating to categories like race, religion, gender equality, etc.
The Commission made sure to stress that while participating in voluntary instruments under the DSA and implementing these codes can play a role – this “nonetheless does not in itself presume compliance with the DSA and is without prejudice to the Commission’s assessment on a case-by-case basis.”
In other words, the EU reserves the right to continue to try to tighten the screws on social media it dislikes, regardless of their participation in schemes like this one.
Currently, some of those under various types of investigation are X, Meta, and TikTok.
