102 Hate Speech Ignited: Understanding Hate Speech in Myanmar that companies or their executives may not be held accountable for human rights abuses. If business- es involve themselves in activities facilitating or furthering hate speech that result in human rights abuses or international humanitarian law violations, they may risk finding themselves facing legal claims for their contributions to violence. Human Rights, Corporations, and Hate Speech Former UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye, provided important guidance for states and business regarding corporate behavior, human rights, and hate speech.717 Regarding the state’s obligation to regulate corporate behavior for example, Germany’s Network Enforcement Act is provided by the Special Rapporteur as a good faith attempt to deal with online hate.718 It requires companies to remove unlawful speech (as defined in the German Criminal Code) from their platform within a set time of typically within 24 hours or even as brief as one hour.719 Companies that fail to do so are liable under German law.720 However, any the imposition of liability by the State must once again meet the necessity, proportionality and legitimacy test (as outlined in the preceding section), judicial oversight and the possibility of appeal by either the company and/or the affected user(s).721 Looking also to the UN Guiding Principles, the UN Special Rapporteur states that social media companies themselves should address hate speech on their platform by engaging in human rights due diligence and review.722 Corporations are to carry out regular impact assessment on how their prod- uct might infringe on others’ human rights. He also urged companies to be transparent and consult affected communities and other stakeholders including human rights experts.723 This transparency is to also extend to their content moderation process, and any corporate policy must reflect human rights norms.724 Like states, any restriction of freedom of expression, must meet the legality, necessity and legitimacy test.725 The Special Rapporteur noted that company definitions of what constitute hate speech vary from different corporations.726 However, a human rights compliant policy that meets the legality parameter, should list: who the protected persons or groups; what kind of speech will be restricted utilizing the ICCPR parameters and how they determine whether or not a user has violated their hate speech rules; categories of speech that will be prohibited beyond incitement (which may not meet the incitement threshold but foster intolerance nonetheless); whether certain groups (in- cluding journalists reporting on hate speech) will be exempt from the rule.727 The Special Rapporteur 717 718 719 720 721 722 723 724 725 726 727 to Regulate, in International Human Rights Law, the Activities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, (July 16, 2018): https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/WGTransCorp/Session3/ DraftLBI.pdf. A/74/486, paras. 40-55. See Ibid., para. 32. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., para. 33. Ibid., para. 44. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., para. 45. Ibid., para. 46. Ibid., paras. 31-33.