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While most will be familiar with the term ‘hate speech’, it is not used by any of the major international human rights treaties, and it has not been clearly defined by the European Court of Human Rights or any other international court.

National governments, technology companies, and international agenciesuse the term ‘hate speech’ in different ways in different documents. It is widely accepted that there is no universally agreed definition of ‘hate speech’ and most attempts rely on vaguely defined terms and subjectivity.