Automated Content Moderation, Hate Speech and Human Rights
Within the framework of a multi-stakeholder, cross-border, EU project entitled SHERPA ‘Shaping the Ethical Dimensions of Smart Information Systems (SIS)’, a project led by the University of De Montfort (UK), a deliverable was developed on 11 specific challenges that SIS (the combination of artificial intelligence and big data analytics) raise with regards to human rights. This blog post seeks to focus on one of those challenges, namely ‘Democracy, Freedom of Thought, Control and Manipulation.’ More...
God “does not and cannot bless sin” - Hate Speech Laws: Quo Vadis?
On the 15th March 2021, the Vatican issued a statement (approved by the Pope) which notes that the Catholic church would not bless same-sex unions, referring to them as “sinful” and underlining that God “does not and cannot bless sin.” This statement gives food for thought (for a lot of different things) but also for the issue of hate speech regulation. In this ambit, this short piece will consider the issue of such regulation as well as the position of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to speech against the LGBT community. More...
Minority vilification: Redress for community members
Balancing the right to be free from hate speech with a right to… hate speech?
By Margarita Ilieva
On 16 February 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (Court) delivered landmark judgments against Bulgaria regarding ethnic minority berating: Behar and Gutman; Budinova and Chaprazov. The domestic courts had failed in their positive duties to afford minority members redress for anti-Roma/anti-Semitic speech attacking their communities. This blog summarises the cases’ backgrounds, the Court’s judgments, and their significance as precedence, and includes two points of criticism and caution as well.[1]
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