Online hate speech targets black and Jewish people
A dedicated website launched in November 2021 makes it easier to report racist hate speech online.
Martin Ruetschi
More than 160 pieces of racist content have been flagged via a new dedicated reporting platform, with black and Jewish people particularly targeted, the Federal Commission against Racism (FCR) said on Tuesday.
Between the end of November 2021 and the end of November 2022, 163 racist comments were reported, it said in a press releaseExternal link. This is the FCR’s first evaluation of the www.reportonlineracism.chExternal link website, which went online in November 2021.
The FCR said it classifies content according to the groups of people affected and makes an initial assessment of its criminal relevance. Xenophobic content that is not targeted at a specific origin or religion is the biggest category, reported 39 times. Hate comments against black people (38) and messages with anti-Semitic content (23) come in second and third place. Those targeting asylum seekers and refugees were also frequent (21).
The most frequently reported content was in comment columns of online media (59), followed by Facebook (41) and Twitter (23). There was almost no problematic content reported on Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. The other platforms reported were blogs, forums and other websites.
The FCR said it had filed eight criminal complaints to the competent authorities as a result of these complaints. In the other cases, it said either there was no link with Switzerland, or the account where the comments were made had been deleted in the meantime, or the offence could only be prosecuted on the basis of a complaint by the persons concerned (e.g. for defamation).
These figures show that dissemination of hate speech online is far from marginal and must be taken seriously, the FCR concludes. In view of positive feedback from civil society and experts, it has decided to extend the duration of this pilot project. The reporting platform was initially planned for one year.
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