EU chief: I deleted Facebook as it’s a highway for hatred

A EUROPEAN commissioner yesterday revealed she deleted her personal Facebook account because it was a ‘ highway for hatred’.

Vera Jourova, who is responsible for justice and consumer affairs, told staff that the website had become too hateful for her as they met to discuss ways of cleaning vile content off the social network.

‘I first met Facebook managers here and I told them I had just cancelled my Facebook account because it was the highway for hatred, and I am not willing to support it,’ she told a press conference in Brussels yesterday.

The admission comes at a time when technology giants such as Facebook,over are the facing enormousGoogle huge quantitiesand pressure Twitter of terrorist propaganda, farRight hate videos and other inappropriate material on their websites.

All three of the companies have taken steps to stop this sort of content being posted, but they still lag far behind the vile hate preachers who use the sites to spread their horrendous messages.

Theresa May warned them last week that they will face huge financial penalties if they do not remove terror material within two hours of it being flagged.

Germany is also proposing to fine Google, Facebook and Twitter tens of millions of pounds – and fine their bosses millions – if they do not act fast enough. Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which is owned by Google, signed a code of conduct in May 2016, promising to look at suspicious content within 24 hours and remove illegal material. But the European Commission said yesterday that they needed to go further, and proposed new ways for the firms to remove hate speech and incitement to terrorism more quickly.

If they fail to comply, the EU could introduce legislation to curb it as early as next year, Miss Jourova said.

Hate speech ‘can lead to violence against people in real life and we must not tolerate it,’ she added.

Miss Jourova acknowledged that executives in Silicon Valley now recognise action is needed. Facebook, Google and Twitter have stepped up their efforts to combat hate speech in recent months, developing new ‘ artificial intelligence’ techniques that can flag up certain key words, familiar images, and even stop certain content from ever being posted.

However, there is still a huge amount of content that slips through – and it is still alarmingly easy to find terror manuals telling would-be jihadists how to construct bombs or use cars for attacks.

In many cases, the technology firms refuse to proactively search for the content, or refuse to remove it once it is flagged – arguing that it is academically useful.

The two-hour target is seen in government as a first step. Industry will then be expected to cut this to one hour and, ultimately, use sophisticated software and artificial intelligence systems to prevent such material appearing at all.

The European Commission also wants the social networks to tackle online bullying. Trolls often use Twitter to bully other users by sending them abuse, and rape and death threats.

‘We must not tolerate it’