A three-tier approach to online harmful speech

Abstract Current efforts for online hate speech regulation mostly focus on explicit forms of harmful speech. This paper argues that harmful speech does not operate only at an explicit level, but that there are other forms of speech capable of producing serious harms through mechanisms that differ from those characteristic of overt harmful speech and that are overlooked in the current regulatory paradigm: dogwhistles, figleaves and other forms of more implicit sexist, racist or homophobic speech fall outside the usual scope of what is deemed harmful, thus easily slipping under the radar. I argue that no single mechanism approach can adequately address the distinct mechanisms through which harmful speech produces and sustains harm. Since current content moderation practice alone is insufficient to detect the full range of harmful speech, the paper proposes three strategies to online speech governance: 1) swift platform-based responses to explicit harmful content, 2) counterspeech strategies based on perspective-taking, including a novel proposal of Kantian Maxim Mirroring, 3) preemptive institutional and group measures that can help mitigate the conditions under which harmful speech can arise.