This paper, developed within the Transatlantic High Level Working Group on Content Moderation Online and Freedom of Expression (TWG) project, and informed by the discussions at the TWG’s Ditchley Park Session, reviews the freedom of expression implications of the Code of Conduct for Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online that was developed by the European Commission in collaboration with major information technology companies in 2016. The analysis looks into the process that led to the adoption of the Code, the Code’s legal basis, and the problems within the system it introduced. The paper also briefly outlines how the European Commission has assessed the implementation of the Code of Conduct and how the Code is reflected on the national level in some EU states. Because a number of countries are proposing new regulatory systems for content moderation, the paper suggests that the experience with the Code of Conduct and its implementation can inform the debates on both the effectiveness and the pitfalls of these proposed regulatory models.
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- Netherlands
