ABSTRACT
Hate speech online is an ongoing and continuously evolving phenomenon: every second enormous quantity of hatred is being spilled on social networks, published on webpages, tweeted among friends and colleagues and searched for on search engines. Not all this hatred is legally relevant and yet it worries civil society as well as public institutions, because it constantly shows us that narrow-mindedness, prejudice and intolerance are so accessible, so common and so close to us, to our children, to vulnerable social groups—such as ethnic, racial, religious and other minorities, people with disabilities and so on—all of whom more often than not become not only passive observers but also targets for haters. However, technological advancements not only (to a certain extent) guarantee the anonymity of haters and permit to share and disseminate this abominate speech but can be also used to fight it: this contribution focuses on artificial intelligence (AI)-based techniques and algorithms that are being used for that purpose. On the one hand, AI tries to identify the hate speech and stop it from spreading, but on the other hand, AI is also used to identify the groups of people against whom the hate speech is being directed so as to prevent and get ahead of any possible mobilisations of haters who could decide to leave the online world and move to the real one and translate their hatred into criminal behaviour. This chapter analyses different ways in which AI is used for this purpose and looks at how and whether AI could stop the spreading of hate speech. The chapter also addresses the main hurdles that could hamper AI in being successful, such as difficulties in natural language processing and contextualisation of the speech, and the possibility that the AI (bots) were used by haters themselves to generate hate speech-based audio and video content.
Gender-based hate speech against women is a form of gender-based violence. Its roots are cultural and deep in society. Gender-based hate speech against women is often invisible and imperceptible given that hate expressions are deeply internalised in daily language. In reality, they are expressions that denote a deep contempt and in some cases hatred which often is translated into violence against women. What does the law do in relation to this issue? This chapter intends to analyse, from a comparative perspective, the approach developed towards hate speech against women for gender reasons from a normative and judicial point of view.
