Twitter Fails E.U. Standard on Removing Hate Speech Online

Twitter has failed to meet European standards for removing hate speech online, figures to be published Thursday show, as pressure mounts, particularly on the Continent, for tech companies to do more to tackle such harmful material.

The battle between European policy makers and tech companies over what should be permitted online has pitted freedom of speech campaigners against those who say hate speech — in whatever form — has no place on the internet.

In this standoff, European officials have called on Silicon Valley companies to take down at least 50 percent of the hate speech from their services once they are notified, and they signed up the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Google to a voluntary code of conduct last year to combat the rising tide of harmful content online.

But findings to be published by the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, show that Twitter removed hate speech from its network less than 40 percent of the time after such content had been flagged to the company.

While the social network failed to meet the European standard, it has improved significantly from a study published late last year, which found that it removed a mere 19 percent of hate speech when notified.

It comes as pressure mounts on Twitter, whose revenue and user figures continue to stall, to clean up its act as the company has become one of the main mechanisms for internet trolls to spread their messages across the web.

Google and Facebook, by contrast, now comply with the region’s demands to take down at least 50 percent of hate speech, upon notification, according to the study.