Hate speech online: the government as regulator and as speaker

Thomas Hochmann (1)

1 CTAD - Centre de Théorie et Analyse du Droit

Acknowledging that the government is a user of social networks may help us to better understand its attempt to regulate them. This paper draws on the French case to show different ways of regulating hate speech online. It then turns to the peculiar case of hate speech expressed by the government. There are good reasons to consider that government hate speech can be restricted in Europe as well as in the United States. Europe and the United States however pull apart when the government regulate the discussion space below its online speech. Here, European governments are under an obligation to fight hate speech, when U.S. government infringes the First Amendment when it attempts to do so.

Mots clés: Freedom of expression; hate speech; government speech; first amendment; social networks

Domaines: Droit

Thomas Hochmann. Hate speech online: the government as regulator and as speaker. Journal of Media Law, 2022, pp.1-20. ⟨10.1080/17577632.2022.2085014⟩. ⟨halshs-03695890⟩