"Brussels welcomes speedier Facebook, Twitter responses to hate speech", Feb 2019

89 per cent of flagged content is removed by tech giants Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter within 24 hours and 72% of the content deemed to be illegal hate speech is removed, the EU reported...The figures, reported by the European Commission in its fourth evaluation on the EU Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online, compare to 40% and 28% respectively when the Code was first launched in 2016. "Illegal hate speech online is not only a crime, it represents a threat to free speech and democratic engagement," said the Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova... Since its launch in 2016, the Code of Conduct has been delivering continuous progress, and the recent evaluation confirms that IT companies provide a swift response to racist and xenophobic hate speech content notified to them. However, the Commission says they do need to improve their feedback to the users notifying content and provide more transparency on notices and removals. It adds that while companies do remove illegal content more and more rapidly, this does not lead to over-removal...Four new companies decided to join the Code in the course of 2018: Google+, Instagram, Snapchat, [and] Dailymotion...Webedia...has also announced its participation.