“People who deny the Holocaust or question its extent ... send a coded message: it would not be bad if it happened again”. Combatting hate speech requires international cooperation, he said. This sort of cooperation is problematic with the US, he said, noting that Hungarian courts had not succeeded in blocking offensive internet content by prosecuting the hosts of such material based on servers in the US.

“We face a shared problem which could destroy our constitutional and democratic values. It is a shared goal and objective to fight incitement to hatred by every means. Free speech can and must be aligned with respect for the rights and dignity of other people,” Trócsányi said.

Israeli justice minister Ayelet Shaked told the conference that hatred now presents itself on the internet, often incited by terrorist organisations in the background. Hatred spread through lies published on the internet could shake whole societies, the Israeli minister said, referring to last year’s wave of terrorist acts in his country.

“Lies spread in the Palestinian territories harm Israel’s reputation,” he added. Israel’s justice ministry has proposed a bill to restrict content providers aimed at disrupting public order, Shaked said.

Service providers are just as instrumental in fighting hate speech as governments, he said, noting cooperation between his government and such providers as Google, Facebook or Twitter, under which those providers blocked content in 70% of the cases the Israeli government raised.

Freedom of expression is important but it should be kept in mind that “the age of darkness will not disappear overnight; in fact it will return in a plethora of other forms”, Shaked said.

Gabriella Cseh, Facebook’s head of public policy for central and eastern Europe, said that Facebook has developed a global system of norms which allows content that is sharply critical of politics, ideologies or government but disallows attacks against individuals and communities.

At Facebook “we believe that greater openness and free debate contributes to the development of society” but the site does not tolerate hate speech or content that directly incites violence.

Republished with permission of Hungary Matters, MTI’s daily newsletter.