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Against that background, the Chamber considered that the applicant company had been in a position to assess the risks related to its activities and that it must have been able to foresee, to a reasonable degree, the consequences which these could entail.

Lastly, the Court observes that the applicant company has argued (see paragraph 78 above) that the Court should have due regard to the notice-and-take-down system that it had introduced. If accompanied by effective procedures allowing for rapid response, this system can in the Court’s view function in many cases as an appropriate tool for balancing the rights and interests of all those involved. However, in cases such as the present one, where third-party user comments are in the form of hate speech and direct threats to the physical integrity of individuals, as understood in the Court’s case-law (see paragraph 136 above), the Court considers, as stated above (see paragraph 153), that the rights and interests of others and of society as a whole may entitle Contracting States to impose liability on Internet news portals, without contravening Article 10 of the Convention, if they fail to take measures to remove clearly unlawful comments without delay, even without notice from the alleged victim or from third parties.

Here, the company has been proactive. Between January and March 2018, Facebook removed 1.9m messages encouraging terrorist propaganda, an increase of 800,000 comments compared to the previous three months. A total of 99.5% of these messages were located with the aid of advancing technology.

But Facebook hasn’t released figures showing how prevalent terrorist propaganda is on its site. So we really don’t know how successful the software is in this respect.

on self-regulation,

Between the two three-month periods there was a 183% increase in the amount of posts removed that were labelled graphically violent. A total of 86% of these comments were flagged by a computer system.

But we also know that Facebook’s figures also show that up to 27 out of every 10,000 comments that made it past the detection technology contained graphic violence.

One estimate suggests that 510,000 comments are posted every minute. If accurate, that would mean 1,982,880 violent comments are posted every 24 hours.

Facebook has also used technology to aid the removal of graphic violence from its site.

This brings us to the other significant figure not included in the data released by Facebook: the total number of comments reported by users. As this is a fundamental mechanism in tackling online abuse, the amount of reports made to the company should be made publicly available

However, even Facebook still has a long way to go to get to total transparency. Ideally, all social networking sites would release annual reports on how they are tackling abuse online. This would enable regulators and the public to hold the firms more directly to account for failures to remove online abuse from their servers.

he regulator, on the other hand, has a more detached role, when compared to older types of media regulation, in which they mainly assess whether mechanisms established by the provider comply with the law

This approach gives rise to concerns that we are just outsourcing regulation to private companies.

Indeed, the delegation of the exercise of regulatory powers to a private entity could be very damaging to freedom of speech and media.

So, I think the legal groundwork for protection but also the fair treatment of users is in the directive. Now it depends on the member states to implement it in such a way that this potential will be fulfilled (and the European Commission has a big role in this process).

Miguel takes a dim view of the accuracy figure. “Accuracy is only judged by agreement. If me and the auditor both allow the obvious sale of heroin, Cognizant was ‘correct,’ because we both agreed,” he says. “This number is fake.”

Even with an ever-changing rulebook, moderators are granted only the slimmest margins of error. The job resembles a high-stakes video game in which you start out with 100 points — a perfect accuracy score — and then scratch and claw to keep as many of those points as you can. Because once you fall below 95, your job is at risk. If a quality assurance manager marks Miguel’s decision wrong, he can appeal the decision. Getting the QA to agree with you is known as “getting the point back.” In the short term, an “error” is whatever a QA says it is, and so moderators have good reason to appeal every time they are marked wrong. (Recently, Cognizant made it even harder to get a point back, by requiring moderators to first get a SME to approve their appeal before it would be forwarded to the QA.)

eforeBefore Miguel can take a break, he clicks a browser extension to let Cognizant know he is leaving his desk. (“That’s a standard thing in this type of industry,” Facebook’s Davidson tells me. “To be able to track, so you know where your workforce is.”)

In that regard, account should be taken, in particular, of the overall presentation of the product marketed by the third party, the circumstances in which a distinction is made between that mark and the sign used by that the third party, and the effort made by that third party to ensure that consumers distinguish its products from those of which it is not the trade mark owner

in part of the European Union, an EU trade mark with a reputation and a sign peacefully coexist

It cannot be excluded that the conduct which can be expected of the third party so that its use of the sign follows honest practices in industrial or commercial matters must be analysed differently in a part of the European Union where consumers have a particular affinity with the geographical word contained in the mark and the sign at issue than in a part of the European Union where that affinity is weaker.

allows the conclusion that in another part of the European Union, where that peaceful coexistence is absent, there is due cause legitimising the use of that sign.

Social network providers, meanwhile, are subject to proactive reporting obligations

The provider must check whether this is the case and report the content immediately, as well as provide the IP address and port number of the person responsible. The user “on whose behalf the content was stored” should be informed that the information has been passed on to the BKA, unless the BKA orders otherwise.

f it advocates crimes against humanity; incites or advocates terrorist acts; or incites hatred, violence, discrimination or insults against a person or a group of people on grounds of origin, alleged race, religion, ethnic background, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, whether real or alleged.

obligations be imposed on the largest content-sharing platform operators, that is, any natural or legal person offering, on a professional basis, whether for remuneration or not, an online content-sharing platform, wherever it is based, used by at least 20% of the population of the French-speaking region of Belgium or the bilingual Brussels-Capital region.

iged to remove or block content notified to them that is ‘clearly illegal’ within 24 hours. T

need to put in place reporting procedures as well as processes for contesting their decisions

appoint an official contact person

half-yearly report on compliance with their obligation

Thus the cost of implementing the order could therefore be regarded as just another overhead associated with ISPs carrying on their business

The implications of cloud platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others differ again. A business built on a technology platform with a track record of well-developed data and model governance, audit capability, responsible product development practices and a culture and track record of transparency will likely reduce some risks related to biased data and model transparency, while encouraging (and even enforcing) adoption of those same practices and norms throughout its ecosystem.

policies that govern their internal practices for responsible technology development; guidance, tools and educational resources for their customers’ responsible use of their technologies; and policies (enforced in terms of service) that govern the acceptable use of not only their platforms but also specific technologies, such as face recognition or gait detection.

At the same time, overreliance on a small, well-funded, global group of technology vendors to set the agenda for responsible and ethical use of AI may create a novel set of risks.

Audit is another area that, while promising, is also fraught with potential conflict. Companies such as O’Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Auditing, founded by the author of Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil, provide algorithmic audit and other services intended to help companies better understand and remediate data and model issues related to discriminatory outcomes. Unlike, for example, audits of financial statements, algorithmic audit services are as yet entirely voluntary, lack oversight by any type of governing board, and do not carry disclosure requirements or penalties. As a result, no matter how thorough the analysis or comprehensive the results, these types of services are vulnerable to manipulation or exploitation by their customers for “ethics-washing” purposes.

, we must broaden our understanding of platforms beyond social media sites to other types of business platforms, examine those risks in context, and approach governance in a way that accounts not only for the technologies themselves, but also for the disparate impacts among industries and business models.

This is a time-sensitive issue

arge technology companies — for a range of reasons — are trying to fill the policy void, creating the potential for a kind of demilitarized zone for AI, one in which neither established laws nor corporate policy hold sway.