Social media managers from some 60 companies and organisations are launching 'Not Here' on Monday to stop the surge in hate speech on social media. The website sets out house rules for online comments and provides practical tips for social media managers to deal with online hate.
Companies and organisations can now refer people who cross the line to the website hierniet.be. Where they will read a message saying: "You posted a comment on a social media message that may come across as disrespectful," followed by a series of recommendations on how to do better.
In addition, the website offers practical tips for social media managers. Research by Textgain, a spin-off from UAntwerpen, shows that hate speech on the Internet has increased sharply in recent years.
"Textgain uses artificial intelligence to observe hate speech on social media. The numbers don’t lie: in less than 2 to 3 years, we observed a doubling of the number of incidents. And that is only a conservative estimate," said Guy De Pauw, CEO of Textgain.
‘Not Here’ therefore grew out of an increasing need for support to deal with increasingly strong and abusive reactions and hate messages.
"We want to make it clear that hate speech has no place on the social networks of companies and organisations. Insults, racist statements and arguments do not only end up with the individuals about whom the post is about, social media managers also digest this every day," stated Delphine Van Belleghem, one of the initiators.
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The initiators also stress they do not want censorship. Asking questions, commenting and criticising are all allowed, but there are limits.
Companies such as Meta, Google Belgium, Proximus, Telenet, STIB, Hyundai, bpost and Microsoft backed the initiative, as did sector associations Belgian Association of Marketing (BAM), UBA, ACC, Kortom and CSquare.
