Europol battles online hate speech while social media platforms sit idle

Europol has supported 18 European law enforcement agencies in helping fight online hate speech and violence against different ethnoreligious groups.

Alongside Europol, Spanish and Hungarian authorities spearheaded the activity, which led to various online platforms and websites that produce hateful content against ethnoreligious groups being identified.

Ethnoreligious groups are those who share a common religious and ethnic background. Judaism and Hinduism are just two examples of ethnoreligious groups.

Overall, Europol found that across 12 countries, more than 6300 links were collected from 46 platforms and 20 websites that incite violence or express hate speech against different ethnoreligious groups.

These websites and platforms harbor dark content that may be spread by organizations, individuals, or groups of people who wish to harm groups of different religious or ethnic origins.

For example, Europol identified groups spreading anti-semitic sentiments, hate speech, and other violent materials.

Law enforcement has also seen an increase in online division since the October 7th attack, which is described by the US Department of State as “the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.”

Having identified platforms, websites, and content that expressed hate speech and violence against ethnoreligious groups, Europol, with the help of different online service providers, issued official removal orders and assessments of said content.

While Europol and other organizations are fighting against online hate speech and violence against minority groups, social media companies are doing little to combat abuse on their platforms.

Researchers at the USC Viterbi Information Sciences Institute found a consistent pattern of abuse and hate speech present on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter).

The study looked into English-language posts between January 2022 and June 2023 to identify certain trends.

During this period, hate speech increased by 50%, and racist posts rose by 42%.

An increase in slurs, particularly transphobic slurs, increased significantly (260%), and hate speech and violence against minority groups got more engagement than other English language posts.