One in three inhabitants of the European Union (EU) over 15 years of age has already come across content on social media that he considered harmful, racism, sexism and homophobia being the main themes of hate messages.
© Reuters
11/06/2026
by
Lusa
O problem of hatred and threats on social networks is one of the main challenges mentioned by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in its annual report published today.
The laws to regulate and protect digital space, the agency notes, met in 2025 with the resistance of companies and also the US Administration.
The report includes data from a survey conducted in November in the 27 countries of the European Union, of which it is concluded that over the previous 12 months, 35% of the population has come across these harmful contents.
In a domain discrimination, 18% of respondents reported racist material, 16% sexist and 14% homophobic, followed by conspiracy theories (11%), transphobic (10%), anti-semitic (9%), terrorist (6%) and child sexual abuse (3%). Another 11% reported “other content” different from the categories mentioned.
By country, the percentage of citizens who reported having seen some kind of harmful content varies between 72% in Sweden and 13% in Portugal.
Facebook is the platform where most respondents (42%) claim to have seen harmful content, followed by Instagram (28%), TikTok (24%), YouTube (22%) and X (12%).
The FRA acknowledges that what respondents consider “damaging” or potentially illegal is subjective and varies from person to person.
Indeed, the other part of the investigation concerns the 9% of respondents who stated that content published by them had been blocked or removed, even though they considered them legal.
The FRA refers to the difficulties in implementing the Digital Services Act (DSA), approved by the EU in 2022, but in force in all Member States only since February 2024, and designed to address the risks to democracy that arise on social networks, ensuring the supervision and transparency of online space.
The law does not determine what is illegal, nor does it require platforms to act as police, but rather to assess risks and take action, and requires transparency and accountability.
The FRA denounces that the EU’s efforts to protect democracy and rights in the digital world have come across “foreign political interference and the lack of cooperation by large corporations”.
In this regard, the report refers to the bans on entry into the country imposed by the United States on several European politicians and activists due to their defence of the DSA, including former Community Commissioner Thierry Breton.
In addition, FRA recalls that several activists or journalists have been spied on in the application of WhatsApp (Meta) messages through an Israeli company program.
The EU agency regrets that the potential benefits for public debate and freedom of expression are overshadowed by the spread of online hatred and the lack of available information on the practices of digital platforms, to which it accuses of creating an ‘opaque system’.
FRA recalls that, last October, the European Commission considered that the Meta (the owner of Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok did not fulfil the transparency obligations under the DSA, and that in December it fined social network X to EUR 120 million for the same reason.
“ Due to the lack of openness of digital platforms, it is not possible to understand adequately how they interfere with fundamental rights and democracy,” the FRA said.
The agency finally denounces the existence of gaps in knowledge about how online platforms manipulate and interfere with their users.