A/HRC/46/58
and religious leaders, public officials should actively and continuously condemn and
speak out against hate speech, and express solidarity with those targeted by such
expressions.
57.
With the cooperation of all relevant sectors – including government agencies,
Internet companies and social media platforms, civil society organizations, law
enforcement, media representatives, educators and members of minorities – an
independent, cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder national-level body
composed of qualified experts should be established to monitor the dissemination of
hate speech and the implementation of relevant laws and policies, work to counter hate
speech against minorities, and develop a code of conduct on the regulation of hate
speech in accordance with international human rights law. The body should cooperate
closely with international and regional human rights mechanisms and processes.
58.
Social media companies should put human rights at the centre of their content
moderation policies and practices and their oversight mechanisms. Freedom of
expression should have a central role, alongside the principles of equality and
non-discrimination, with a specific focus on protected characteristics such as ethnicity,
religion or language, and on antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Gypsyism, and
discrimination based on caste and other grounds.
59.
Social media companies should protect users against hate speech. They should
also take measures to prevent, mitigate and remedy human rights violations that they
may cause or contribute to, as established by the Guiding Principles on Business and
Human Rights.
60.
Social media companies should evaluate how their products, services and
practices affect human rights, particularly the rights of persons belonging to minorities
since they are the main targets of hate speech on social media, and should make that
information available through public and transparent periodic human rights impact
assessments. Such assessments must focus specifically and concretely on hate speech,
including through the application of algorithms, and on its impact on minority
communities.
61.
Internet companies should also hold a transparent dialogue with civil society,
especially those representing minorities as the main targets of hate speech, on how they
are addressing issues highlighted in the human rights impact assessments.
62.
Social media companies should ensure that their hate speech policies contain an
evaluation of context, including the harm to persons belonging to minorities, by
ensuring that human beings are involved in the application of any use of automation or
artificial intelligence tools.
63.
Companies should at a minimum expressly align their content policies, decisions
and actions concerning hate speech and any oversight mechanisms with international
human rights law and standards, including United Nations treaties; the Declaration on
the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic
Minorities; the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; the United Nations
Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech; the Rabat Plan of Action; the annual
report of the Special Rapporteur on minority issues on hate speech, social media and
minorities (A/HRC/46/57), and the 2018 report of the Special Rapporteur on the
promotion and protection of freedom of opinion and expression on the regulation of
online “hate speech” (A/HRC/38/35). Companies should also ensure the greatest
possible transparency, accessibility and consistency in the application of their content
policies, decisions and actions, and should further ensure clarity in the definition of
their hate speech policies.
64.
All stakeholders should develop methods for identifying expressions that amount
to advocacy of hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.
65.
States should take action against disinformation deliberately spread to cause
harm to minorities. National human rights institutions and civil society should
collaborate to provide, collect and disseminate relevant data on the incidence and
phenomenon of hate speech against minorities.
8