The EU-NGO Human Rights Forum, an EEAS event on The impact of New Technologies on Human Rights hosted on December 10, 2020, Council of Europe’s head of Information Society Patrick Penninckx, speaking on “Enhancing Freedom of Expression online: Fighting Disinformation and Hate Speech” in the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms in the Digital Sphere panel. The speaker highlighted the spread of challenges to the freedom of expression in the digital world, ranging from the rising influence of artificial intelligence systems and surveillance technologies to disinformation campaigns and electoral manipulation. He also outlined the impact of Coronavirus pandemic on trust in media and government, on stereotyping communities and individuals and on civic freedoms. He further explained suitable measures to counter hate speech and fake news, such as regulation by national authorities, ethically geared content curation and filtering by internet intermediaries, and media literacy education programmes for users.

• Thematic webpage: Information Disorder
• Thematic page: Hate Speech