Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced a new AI tool on the 11th of March that will rank social media platforms by the amount of hate speech they contain, Politico reports.
Speaking at the International Summit Against Hate and Digital Harassment, Sánchez said that hate itself is dangerous, and that social media has turned it into a weapon of social polarization that has seeped into everyday life. He added that social media today is a “failed machine.”
The new system, HODIO, will analyze a large amount of publicly available social media activity to assess the scope and spread of online hate speech. The data will be used to track how hateful content evolves and how it spreads across platforms. The information will be included in a publicly available ranking that will show how much hate speech is present on the largest social networks.
The European Union has introduced several laws and regulations to limit illegal and harmful online content,
such as the Digital Services Act. The laws have angered the US administration, which sees them as censorship of the online environment.
The new Spanish tool to limit hate speech was announced at a time when Sanchez has repeatedly engaged in heated exchanges with US President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.
The Spanish prime minister said the initiative is designed to make social media platforms take responsibility for how algorithms allow divisive content to spread widely. He also said the government plans to provide for legal liability for the increased spread of hate speech through algorithms. Sanchez announced in February efforts to introduce stricter digital surveillance, and wants to ban the use of social media by teenagers under 16.
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