📖 Content moderation glossary
What is hate speech?
In short
Hate speech is content that attacks, demeans or incites violence or discrimination against people because of a protected characteristic such as origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.
Hate speech differs from an ordinary insult because it targets a group, or a person as a member of a group. In many EU countries, some forms are criminal offences; EU law also requires member states to criminalise public incitement to violence or hatred based on race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.
Example: under an article about refugees, a comment arguing that immigration policy should be stricter is an opinion. A comment calling a nationality vermin or calling for violence against them is hate speech and should be removed.
Hate speech is hard to moderate because it is often coded, ironic or hidden behind spelling tricks, and because the same word can be an insult or a quote. Media and public bodies are especially exposed, and leaving such content online damages both their reputation and the safety of the people targeted. OpenModeration's AI reads comments in context, and ambiguous cases are handled by the OpenModeration team.