Experts called for tighter rules on hate speech at the House Human Rights Committee on Monday, focusing on social media comments and how they are handled. The committee heard that the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) and the Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory (MedDMO) had been designated as Cyprus’s ‘trusted flaggers’ to forward complaints to social media companies.
A representative of the Cyprus Radio-Television and Digital Services Authority, which made the designation, said trusted flaggers are recognised bodies that submit reports and complaints to social media companies and are given priority when those are examined.
Aristotelis Konstantinidis, associate professor of international law, pointed to a regulatory and legislative gap in Cyprus. Comments on social media need to be handled differently depending on whether they appear on ordinary users’ accounts or on the accounts of news organisations, he said. Both can be regulated, he added, although media outlets cannot monitor comments on social media around the clock.
The Authority’s representative said news organisations were not responsible for comments posted on their social media accounts, and that responsibility lay with the social media companies.
Konstantinidis also said the definition of hate speech should be updated. While it is not wrong, it needs revisiting to make the guidelines that exist internationally clearer, and incorporating EU texts into the law would help everyone involved, he said. People can speak strongly, express themselves and disagree, he said, but “I cannot restrict groups of people, marginalise them, target them, belittle them”.
Venetia Papa, assistant professor of journalism and digital media at CUT, proposed a national hate speech observatory involving the Authority, the Cyprus Media Complaints Commission, universities and civil society. Members of the public could file complaints with it, and it would collect hate speech material and report it, acting as an intermediary between platforms and the police.
“There are specialised and accessible mechanisms in other countries, such as France and Germany,” she said, adding that content moderation tools also exist to check comments. She stressed the need for a national digital services coordinator, as users in Cyprus do not know how to report content, and said algorithmic literacy should have been taught as a school subject.
Andreas Anastasiadis, assistant director of the Crime Combating Department at Police Headquarters, said the law did not need to be replaced, although it could be improved. Complaints can already be made through the police DiGiPOL platform, the website of the police cybercrime directorate and the 1480 line.
The police have specialist expertise but “we do not have the staff to constantly monitor hate speech”, he said, as they also deal with crimes such as pornography and terrorism.
Stefanos Evangelidis, secretary of Accept LGBTI Cyprus, said hate speech was not confined to the internet but affected the real world. His organisation now has “the first case that reached the Attorney General and the court for incitement to violence”, he said.
