Vera Jourova, the vice president of the European Commission, has urged social media platforms TikTok and X – formerly known as Twitter – to step up efforts to combat hate speech.

Jourova made the comments following meetings with TikTok chief executive officer Shou Chew and X head of global affairs Nick Pickles this week, with the European Union carrying out an ongoing investigation into Big Tech company’s strategies to combat hate speech and other harmful content.

This renewed focus on social media content moderation comes following the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent bombing of Gaza, while legislators are also keenly aware of social media’s potential disruptive impact on the EU parliament election in June 2024 and the US presidential election in November of the same year.

TikTok said that it has removed millions of posts since last month’s Hamas attack, with a combination of artificial intelligence and that it has a dedicated team for removing violent content linked to children.

The EU introduced the Digital Services Act in 2022, which compels large tech platforms and search engines to do more to tackle harmful and illegal content under threat of fines.

On X, Jourova said that she was pleased by the improvements made by TikTok, but urged the platform to continue its work. Thanking the TikTok boss for a “constructive meeting” she added: “We need #TikTok to be more responsible & responsive, to step up work against illegal #HateSpeech, #Hamas #terrorist content and child abuse on its platform.”

Of the Elon Musk owned X, Jourova said that there is a “high number of illegal Hamas terrorist content” on the platform and warned that the company demonstrated a “lack of preparedness” for the aforementioned EU elections. She also added that the company – which famously fired thousands of workers including most content moderators following Musk’s takeover – does not employ “sufficient staff speaking smaller [European] languages to counter #disinformation”.

She concluded that X “needs to do more and comply [with] #DSA”.

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