Introduction

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Illegal content online

June 2018

Report

Flash Eurobarometer 469

INTRODUCTION

The European C ommission has taken a series of targeted and horizontal measures to curb the

spread of illegal content online, inc luding on such as hate speech, c hild sexual abuse material,

incitement to terrorism, consume r scams and cont ent that infringes intellectual property rights. On

28th Septem ber 2017 t he Comm ission adopte d a Com munic ation o n t ackli ng illegal content online,

towards enhancing responsibility of online platforms1. Following on from this, on March 1 2018, the

Commission issued a Recommendation on measures to effectively tackle illegal content online2.

This Recommendation emphasises the need for online platforms to take greater responsibility when

it comes to the governance of online content. It clearly sets out the processes online platforms

should put in place to enhance the detection and removal of illegal content. These include clearer

rules for notifying illegal c ontent, more proactive tools and technologies to identify and remove

illegal content, and, importantly, stronger safeguards to ensure dec isions to remove conte nt are

accurate and well-founded3.

To explore Europeans’ experience of illeg al content online, and their opinions about the role and

responsibility of online platforms, this survey explores the following areas:

!!The use of various types of online hosting services;

!!Views about the safety of the Internet and addressing illegal content online;

!!The types of illegal content e ncountered online, the actions take n as a result, and satisfaction

with the hosting service’s response;

!!Respondents’ experiences of having legal content wrongfully blocked, the reasons given for

this and including the actions taken as a result;

!!Opinions about th e actions Internet hosting services should take to address illegal content

online, including content removal and the right of appeal.

This surve y was carried out by the TNS Political & Soc ial netw ork in all 28 Member States of the

European Union, between 18 and 26 June 2018. Some 33,244 respondents from different social

and demographic groups were interviewed via telephone in their mother tongue on behalf of the

DirectorateｌGe neral f or Commu nications Network s, Content and Te chnol ogy (DG CO NNECT).

The methodology used is t hat of Flash Eurobarometer surveys as carried out by the Directorate-

General for Communication “Media monitoring, media analysis and Eurobarometer” Unit)4 .. A

technical note on the manner in which interviews were conducted by the Institutes within the TNS

Political & Social network is appended as an annex to this report. Also included are the interview

methods and confidence int ervals5.

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1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52017DC 0555

2 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/commission-recommendation-measures-effectively-tackle-illegal-content-online

3 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/illegal-content-online-platforms

4 http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/index_en.htm

5 The results tables are included in the annex. It should be noted that the total of the percentages in the tables of this report may exceed

100% when th e respondent has the possibility of giving several an swers to the quest ion.