Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 20, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 27, 2026
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Tech giants like Facebook and YouTube commit to stronger measures against online hate speech under EU's updated code of conduct, impacting compliance.
By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Meta's Facebook, Elon Musk's X, Google's YouTube and other tech companies have agreed to do more to tackle online hate speech under an updated code of conduct that will now be integrated into EU tech rules, the European Commission said on Monday.
Other signatories to the voluntary code set up in May 2016 are Dailymotion, Instagram, Jeuxvideo.com, LinkedIn, Microsoft hosted consumer services, Snapchat, Rakuten Viber, TikTok and Twitch.
"In Europe there is no place for illegal hate, either offline or online. I welcome the stakeholders' commitment to a strengthened Code of conduct under the Digital Services Act (DSA)," EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said in a statement.
The DSA requires tech companies to do more to combat illegal and harmful content on their platforms. Compliance with the updated code could impact regulators' enforcement of the Act, EU officials said.
Under the revised code, the companies pledged to allow not-for-profit or public entities with expertise on illegal hate speech to monitor how they review hate speech notices, and to assess at least two thirds of these notices received from them within 24 hours.
The companies will also take measures, such as the use automatic detection tools to reduce hate speech on their platforms, and provide information on the role of recommendation systems and the organic and algorithmic reach of illegal content prior to its removal.
They will present country-level data broken down by the internal classification of hate speech such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
Meta's Facebook, Elon Musk's X, Google's YouTube, and other tech companies have agreed to tackle online hate speech under the updated code of conduct.
The Digital Services Act requires tech companies to do more to combat illegal and harmful content on their platforms.
Under the revised code, companies pledged to allow not-for-profit entities to monitor their review of hate speech notices and assess at least two measures to combat hate speech.
Companies will present country-level data broken down by internal classifications of hate speech, including race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
The companies will implement automatic detection tools to reduce hate speech on their platforms and provide information on the role of recommendation systems.
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