Facebook cites EU report to claim it tackles hate speech better than Google & Twitter

Facebook said that the social media firm has been able to tackle hate speech better than Google and Twitter, citing an independent European Commission report. European Commission has released the results of its fifth evaluation of the 2016 Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online.

The results have shown an overall improvement with tech giants assessing 90 per cent of flagged content within 24 hours and removing 71 per cent of the content deemed to be illegal hate speech. While Facebook assesses 95.7 per cent of the notifications in less than 24 hours, the corresponding figures for YouTube stood at 81.5 per cent, and for Twitter at 76.6 per cent.

According to the independent report, only Facebook is consistently informing both trusted flaggers and general users as Twitter, YouTube and Instagram provide feedback more frequently when notifications come from trusted flaggers. It said that Facebook gave feedback to 93.7 per cent of notifications, Instagram to 62.4 per cent of the notifications, Twitter to 43.8 per cent and YouTube only to 8.8 per cent.

“While we recognize we have more to do, these results suggest we are moving in the right direction and have systems in place which continue to lead our industry,” said Guy Rosen, VP Integrity at Facebook, said in a statement.

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'Close the gaps'

Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Justice, welcomed the “good results” but warned against getting satisfied with these improvements, calling for continuing the good work. He urged the platforms to close the gaps observed in most recent evaluations, in particular on providing feedback to users and transparency. 

The Commission said in a statement that it will consider ways to prompt all platforms dealing with illegal hate speech, to set up effective notice-and-action systems. It also vowed to continue facilitating the dialogue between IT companies and civil society organisations working on the ground to tackle illegal hate speech.

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