“There are two main questions. First is how to encourage debate without hate speech and discrimination, and the second is how to make news (real news) more worthy or clickable than fake news.”, said communicologist Bojan Kordalov, at Conference: Attacks on democracy and human rights: Civil society organizations in support of Western Balkans societies facing disinformation, hate speech and hybrid attacks, organized by CIVIL in cooperation with Balkan Forum and members of the Civil Society Platform for Democracy and Human Rights (CSP).
He’ll give one of the answers on – How many of the institutions have moderation policies of their social media accounts? I am not talking about negative comments, I am talking about comments with hate speech, discrimination. My answer is none, said Kordalov.
Kordalov mentioned that hate speech leads towards concrete criminal acts, and noted that lot of the people who use hate speech may do something that is criminal and problematic, then or in the future.
“What can public institutions do in this fight? Firstly, act. They should act, not talk. They should be more effective in sanctioning the criminal actions. Secondly, encouraging debate with inclusiveness, especially with differing opinions to the ruling party, but not opinions that contain hate speech or discrimination. Third, creating moderation policies that have to clearly state what is not acceptable on the social media of public institutions, because it goes against the laws or is problematic. Fourth, we should focus on education. Fifth and final, each public institution must give professional services timely, giving equal access to everyone. This is one part of the start of the discussion, and will help us to win the battles against fake news and against hate speech and discrimination. If we do not take concrete measures now, it might be too late later”, explained Bojan Kordalov, on Wednesday (7.28.2021), Skopje.
