What if online hate were a crime?
Brussels will propose making hate speech on the internet a crime as early as this year. And to confuse fighting hatred with promoting freedom of expression is to misunderstand what true freedom is.
Soon, spreading hatred on the internet could be a crime in the European Union (EU). In an attempt to clean up discourse on this kind of platform, which today is — in effect — the public space, the European Commission is expected to propose criminalising this behaviour as early as this year.
The measure is set out, in so many words, in the European Democracy Action Plan: “In 2021, the Commission will propose an initiative to extend the list of EU crimes […] to cover hate crime and hate speech, including online hate speech.”
AI translation from the Portuguese. First published in ECO on 21 January 2021.