The AVMSD as a harmonized approach to moderating hate speech?

Abstract

While the EU Commission has set its sights on much broader online content regulation through the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the ongoing reforms to the eCommerce Directive (eCD), the AudioVisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) is set to play a role in online hate regulation for content on video-sharing platforms (VSPs). The challenges though are greater than fitting within the DSA agenda and include particular barriers from national content moderation laws across various member-states, together with a fragmented umbrella of pan-European content regulation mechanisms. The convergence in timing of the AVMSD transposition, the draft DSA and the reform of the eCD (and its liability shield) offers a unique opportunity to assess the implications of harmonized content moderation responsibilities for hate speech from 2020 and beyond. This article explores the AVMSD, DSA and eCD as a ‘trend’, before discussing the impact of the reformulated AVMSD on VSPs and their efforts to tackle online hate. It argues that the AVMSD is an underappreciated tool in the increasingly harmonized approach to moderating online hate speech, but also a trigger-point for the new EU trend towards tackling platform power.