Twitch joins EU code of conduct against online hate

The European Commission welcomes the decision of Twitch, an interactive live video streaming service, to join the code of conduct of theEUthe EU executive said in a statement.

This code is intended to combat hate messages aimed at people because of their origin, religion or sexual orientation.

Younger people are particularly vulnerable to hate and abuse and we owe it to them to make the internet a safer space for them.said Commission Vice-President for Values ​​and Transparency, Vera Jourova.

European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders welcomed a not in the right directionand called on other companies to sign the code. The more of us who commit to this goal, the greater the impact will be.did he declare.

YouTube and Facebook among the signatories

Twitch, owned by Amazon, announced last December the establishment of a system to detect malicious users, after a wave of racist and homophobic harassment.

The code of conduct of theEU Against Online Hate, launched in 2016, now has 12 signatories: in addition to Twitch, it includes Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snaapchat, Dailymotion, Jeuxvideo.com, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and since last May, the Viber messaging application, belonging to the Japanese group Rakuten.

The signatories undertake to assess within 24 hours the majority of content reported by users as hate speech online, and to remove it if necessary, in accordance with national and European legislation.

The Commission highlighted the positive results of this code, indicating that on average, technology companies assessed 81% of flagged content within 24 hours, and removed 62.5% of content deemed to be hate speech online.

Twitch has also recently joined the new version of the European Code of Practice against Disinformation.

The two codes of theEU are called upon to be integrated into the European regulation in the process of being adopted on digital services, the DSA.