Combatting disinformation on LGBT+ issues on big tech platforms, has become a fundamental human rights issue. The European Commission must pass a strong Digital Service Act to increase transparency and improve content moderation.
Online hate speech, harassment, and surveillance - especially of human rights actors - have reached unprecedented proportions in the past years.
The spread of hate and disinformation against LGBT+ and other vulnerable communities have become increasingly widespread online and are wreaking havoc on fundamental human rights across the globe.
Meanwhile, Big Tech like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and others facilitate these developments, while remaining largely unchecked by national governments and international bodies.
Today, hate groups, use the lack of accountability and transparency of such platforms to sabotage and attack individual activists, organizations, and human rights defenders:
On the one hand, reports against illegal content or threats against individual activists are usually met with deafening silence by Facebook and Co.
On the other hand, enemies of human rights routinely organize thousands of people to report ordinary personal profiles of activists, triggering Facebook's automatic blocking algorithm, effectively silencing them with the click of a button.
And this is not all! To increase profit, big tech platforms continue to boost disinformation and hate content, putting profits above people’s rights on a global scale.
This has to stop!
The European Digital Services Act (DSA) will make platforms who pose particular risks of spreading illegal content and harming human rights accountable, by imposing strict rules and important obligations on them.
The DSA proposes measures to increase transparency and oblige big tech to undertake mandatory risk assessments regarding illegal content, negative effects on fundamental rights, and intentional manipulation.
