The sCAN project cooperated in organising an unannounced monitoring exercise with the International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH) and the project Open Code for Hate-Free Communication (OpCode). The goal of the monitoring exercise was to evaluate the adherence of the IT companies Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to the Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online, developed in 2016 by the European Commission. The organisations participating in this monitoring exercise had already been participating in previous monitoring exercises organised by the European Commission and INACH. During this monitoring, the partners reported 484 cases of illegal online hate speech to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
The monitoring took place between 20. January 2020 and 28.February 2020. The sCAN partners reported 484 cases of illegal online hate speech to the IT companies Facebook (242 cases), Twitter (127), YouTube (66) and Instagram (49). In order to test the reaction of the IT companies to notifications by their general user base, the notifications were first sent anonymously through publicly available channels. In a second step, 94 cases that had not been removed after notification as general users were reported again through reporting channels available only for trusted flaggers.
