Increasing use of hate speeches on the social media

According to an European study published on Friday in Barcelona, Spain, the use of hate speech is increasingly becoming common on the internet.

Some people are taking advantage of the absence of prosecution to disseminate such messages.

A recent study by scholars in Barcelona has found out that people who receive racist or homophobic messages through social networks have reached the point where they think the actions are normal and can’t be bothered.

In Africa, hate speech comes in all tones and volumes and has become almost a key legitimate tool for elections.

President of SOS Racism based in Paris, France, Domique Soppo while speaking with Africanews said they have made some observations regarding the issue.

“Regarding terrorism, we were not specifically targeting on the apologies made on terrorism. we have made this observation, a lot of hateful content which we had reported on the social media has not been removed. For example on Twitter, only 4 per cent of the content reported has been withdrawn. As for YouTube, deleted content represented 7 per cent. AS for Facebook, it performed the best although there’s still much to be done,” he said.

Soppo said the posts they reported on were extremely violent, racist, anti-arabs, anti-muslims, anti-semites, homophobic.He reiterated that they took down abusive content as European law requires them to.

The investigation was conducted in five European countries – Italy, France, Spain, Romania, United Kingdom.

Investigators interviewed 150 users of social networks, magistrates and police officers and have discovered that in most cases the victims do not denounce the offending comments.

According to the fundamental rights agency of the European Union, between 60 and 90% of victims have renounce to lodging complaint.