Social media companies are getting faster at responding to hate speech online.
Tech companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter remove 72 percent of illegal hate speech on their platforms, the EU found. The response rate is a big improvement from two years ago, when tech companies removed just 28 percent of content.
The figures come from an evaluation released Monday by the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, as part of its "code of conduct" for social media platforms. Tech companies including Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft signed onto the initiative when it launched in 2016 in an effort to remove racist and xenophobic content from their platforms.
"Today, after two and a half years, we can say that we found the right approach and established a standard throughout Europe on how to tackle this serious issue, while fully protecting freedom of speech," said Vera Jourova, a European commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality, in a press release.
The EU's report found Facebook now removes 82 percent of hate speech on the platform, up from 28 percent in 2016. The figures are a rare piece of goods news for the social media giant that has struggled to manage misinformation and "fake news" on its platform.
Twitter, meanwhile, showed a slight decrease in the amount of content it took down. The report found 43.5 percent of hate speech flagged on Twitter was removed in that time frame, down from 45 percent last year.
The European Commission defines "hate speech" as "the public incitement to violence or hatred directed to groups or individuals on the basis of certain characteristics, including race, color, religion, descent and national or ethnic origin."
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