Mr. Hassan also called internet companies to conduct thorough, honest and public human rights audit of the impact of their products and practices on minorities, in the context of hate speech; and hold a transparent dialogue with civil society, including those representing minority groups, on how they are addressing issues highlighted in the audit. Finally, Mr. Hassan stressed that the United Nations and other intergovernmental organisations should continue to ensure that hate speech remains on the global agenda; and that they use existing soft law principles and standards to ensure stakeholders continue to engage and respond; whilst civil society, NGOs and minority youth continue to have a seat at the table, to be able to raise hate speech concerns with states and Internet companies, and obtain meaningful responses. Dr. Sejal Parmar, Lecturer at the School of Law of the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom stated that internet companies and in particular social media platforms have a sheer and swelling power over our human rights and democracies, as well as over the possibility to influence people. As examples, she mentioned that there are 3.8 billion -just under half the world’s population-, on social media platforms and that Facebook has more monthly active users than there are adherents of the world’s largest religion. Dr. Parmar noted that the efforts deployed by companies to address hate speech -and other ills-, such as apologies and PR efforts; the banning of certain accounts; explicit commitments to human rights in content policies; updates to their hate speech of policies; the release of transparency reports on hate speech removals have been deemed insufficient by many human rights advocates and observers. For them, companies are not only failing to respond effectively, they are actively and knowingly facilitating hate speech, and hence continuing to enable real world discrimination and violence. So what should companies be doing to address online hate speech, particularly against minorities, under international human rights law? Dr. Parmar made specific reference to the 2019 report to the General Assembly of the former UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye. The report rightly cautions against online censorship of legitimate expression that can result from overbroad definitions of hate speech. Freedom of expression is essential for the realisation of minority rights, for the expression of minority claims, but it should be the online hateful expression what should restricted, especially when it reaches the threshold of advocacy of hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. The report’s recommendations are grounded upon companies’ duties to respect human rights under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and the substantive standards of Articles 19 and 20 of the ICCPR, as well as the Rabat Plan of Action. These recommendations present a starting point and should themselves be built upon by other UN human rights bodies, including this Forum and the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues in his future reports. Dr. Parmar called companies to take several steps, including: expressly align their content moderation policies concerning hate speech and any oversight mechanisms with 16