Freedom of Expression

By Katharine Gelber Hate speech is proliferating online and governments, regulators and social media companies are struggling to keep pace with their efforts to combat it. In July 2021, the racist abuse of Black English football players on Facebook and Twitter has brought the issue to the forefront and shown how slow and ineffective the tech ...

By Tech Against Terrorism Support mechanisms, legal certainty, and safeguards needed to avoid negative impact On 28 April the EU Parliament announced that the regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online had been approved. On 7 June, the law, which was initially introduced by the Commission and has gone through several iterations, entered into force and ...

By Jillian C. York and Eliot Harmon Internet Companies Must Adopt Consistent Rules and Transparent Moderation Practices Big online platforms tend to brag about their ability to filter out violent and extremist content at scale, but those same platforms refuse to provide even basic information about the substance of those removals. How do these platforms ...

By Philippa Smith When it comes to debates about free speech that needs to be protected and hate speech that needs to be legislated, the idiom of “drawing the line” is constantly referenced by politicians, journalists and academics. It has surfaced again as New Zealanders struggle to comprehend the abhorrence of the Christchurch terror attack and ...

By Stefan Theil Germany’s infamous network enforcement law – which seeks to more heavily regulate social media – came into force at the start of 2018 to almost unanimous criticism. That is unfortunate, because I believe the law is a risk worth taking and can serve as a good starting point for governments considering tougher regulations ...

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism held an event this morning, 6 December 2017, at Google’s Brussels’ offices.  The event featured representatives from GIFCT founder companies, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter, along with the EU Commission, EUROPOL, ICT4Peace, CDT, and others.  The first panel discussion and Q&A included stakeholders from agencies engaged in the ...

By Tobias Gemmerli This article was originally published by the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) on 10 November 2016. Our democratic culture can act as a safeguard against radicalisation, if we make space in the public debate for counter-cultural movements and radical political projects. In the confrontation with radicalism and political violence, democratic freedoms are often named the ...

by Jacob Mchangama The global spate of terrorist attacks has brought the phenomenon of online radicalisation to the forefront. Governments and intelligence services warn that extremist groups use social media to recruit new adherents and potential terrorists. From the perspective of human rights, this raises a question – where should the line be drawn between ...