Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others are failing to meet the targets given earlier this year to the European Commission to remove hate speech from their pages, according to a monitoring exercise conducted by the International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH) and other NGOs in cooperation with the European Commission.
The results reveal that only 40 percent of notifications of online hatred brought to civil society were assessed within the 24 hours, while only 28 percent of hate posts were removed immediately.
According to INACH, "the social media companies could have done a lot better and should have done a lot better. Their response came down to the usual promise to do better."
Vera Jourová, European commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, emphazied the need to curb online hate speech and said that she hoped things would improve in future.
“If Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft want to convince me and the ministers that the non-legislative approach can work, they will have to act quickly and make a strong effort in the coming months,” Jourová said.
“The last weeks and months have shown that social media companies need to live up to their important role and take up their share of responsibility when it comes to phenomena like online radicalisation, illegal hate speech or fake news.”
Recently, the World Jewish Congress criticized Google's subsidiary YouTube for its continued failure to remove to stop neo-Nazis from using the online video channel to distribute thousands of anti-Semitic music clips.
“Google has been put on notice many times, and it has known about the extent of the problem for year. By failing to act, it helping in the proliferation of racist and anti-Semitic propaganda on the internet. We therefore urge them: Don’t be evil, don’t abet evil – act against evil," WJC CEO Robert Singer said in June.
