On November 28th, Eglė Kuktoraitė, communications coordinator of the National LGBT* rights organization LGL, participated in a meeting with representatives from the European Commission, as well as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, at Google’s Dublin headquarters.
During the meeting, representatives from several European non-governmental organizations currently monitoring hate speech on social media discussed problems that have arisen in their efforts to combat this hate speech.
Facebook, Twitter and Youtube representatives who attended the meeting underlined the importance of cooperation with non-governmental organizations. NGO experts who participated in the initiative shared difficulties that they had encountered when reporting instances of hate speech on social media.
During the meeting in the Google office, participants emphasized that monitoring hate speech on social media is made especially difficult by differing definitions of hate speech between member states. It is believed that further cooperation between social networks and NGO experts will be integral to challenging online hate speech.
