How the law protects hate speech on social media

What does the law say about hate speech online? The First Amendment provides broad protection to speech that demeans a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or similar grounds. At the same time, tort law can be used to redress defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and privacy invasions; and criminal law can be used to redress threats, harassment, stalking, impersonation, extortion, solicitation, incitement, and computer crimes. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, offers social-media platforms significant protections. The takeaway? Pure hate speech is constitutionally protected, and Facebook, Twitter, et al., are not legally responsible for content that a user posted that created liability for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, etc., even if the platform moderated some of it.