Social-media giants tell the EU they’ll increase efforts to tackle hate speech, for sure

This week, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, Twitch, LinkedIn, Snapchat — OK, basically every huge name in social media — all signed a new Code of Conduct from the European Commission covering illegal hate speech online.

The platforms committed to updated standards around monitoring illegal hate speech on their apps, agreeing to provide information about the outcomes of actions they take and hand over data on just how wide the reach of any offending content was. Sounds sensible in theory, except that (as The Verge noted) the pledges are entirely voluntary, and the companies making them won’t face penalties if they opt out later.

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The timing is interesting, given that conversations around content moderation are bubbling away as intensely as ever at the biggest social-media sites — not least at Meta, where Mark Zuckerberg recently announced decisions to ditch its third-party fact-checking program, simplify content policies, and move the content-moderation department to Texas.

According to its most recent Community Standards Enforcement Report (a publication tracking the company’s efforts to make its platforms “safe and inclusive”), Meta now takes more action against hate speech content on Instagram than it does on Facebook, with 8 million pieces actioned on the former in Q3 2024.

Interestingly, the amount of content its moderators actioned on Facebook is down ~75% from the 2021 peak. It’s unclear whether there’s less hate speech being posted on Facebook recently, or whether Meta’s just doing less about it now.