DiSCourse Seminar with Clara Rauchegger
21 January 2021, 12:00 (CET), online
Big Blue Button
DiSCourse - The Digital Science Seminar Series on
Illegal content on social media: A legal perspective on the responsibilities of platform providers
Digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube offer a range of convenient services to their users. However, they can also be misused for the proliferation of illegal content such as terrorist propaganda, child pornography, hate speech or false information. This presentation examines to what extent the providers of digital platforms can be obliged to remove illegal content posted by their users. In specific, the presentation looks at a prominent court case that involved the former Austrian politician Eva Glawischnig who was insulted on Facebook. She asked Facebook to remove the offensive user comment, but the social media platform failed to comply. The central legal question in this case was whether Facebook could be obliged by a court to remove not only the offensive comment, but also any identical or equivalent content that is uploaded by any user. The presentation analyzes the answer given by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In one of the most striking passages of the judgment, the ECJ declared that platform providers should be able to use automated search tools to identify offensive comments. The presentation criticizes this assumption, arguing that the existing Artificial Intelligence systems are not yet sophisticated enough to classify content as hateful in a reliable way. The presentation is addressed to an interdisciplinary audience. Participants do not require any previous knowledge of law or Artificial Intelligence technology.
Clara Rauchegger, University of Innsbruck, Department of Legal Theory and Future of Law and DiSC