European Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová, responsible for combating hate speech online, used to have a Facebook profile but deleted it because it was “full of hatred,” she said Monday.
“I realized that if I cancelled it, there will be less hatred in Europe,” she said. “It is the free decision of everyone to decide whether there is more harm than benefit [from using social media]. And I made [my decision].”
One of the Czech commissioner’s jobs is dealing with Facebook and others to fight hate speech online.
Jourová has repeatedly called on social media companies to do more to fight hateful messages and discrimination on their platforms. The EU also runs a forum with Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Google and others to remove terrorist content as part of the fight against ISIS and other terrorist groups.
Yet companies like Facebook have been under constant attack from politicians, including the British, French and German governments, to beef up their reactions to such “illegal content.”
The EU is still considering drafting laws to force social media firms to remove more content quicker.
“In the spring we will decide if we regulate or not regulate illegal content online,” Jourová said. But the commissioner added: “I do not hide that I am not in favor of hard regulation here. The freedom of speech is of almost absolute importance.”
She’ll discuss the matter with colleagues in January, in light of a Commission evaluation of how platforms combat terrorist content and deal with copyright infringement.
Politico
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