Notario: The HODIO Fever

By Miguel Angel Aguilar

On March 11, the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced the launch of the tool “HODIO: Hate and Polarization footprint” that will have the function of measuring the presence, evolution and scope of hate speech on digital platforms.

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As Jacob Mchangama has written in his book Freedom of Expression. A global history from Socrates to social networks (Editorial Ladera Norte, Madrid, 2026), it is true that freedom of expression can be used to increase polarization, sow distrust and inflict serious damage, but the belief that the profound challenges faced by dignity, trust, democracy and the institutions of our divided age can be overcome at their expense is barely sustained from a historical point of view. In addition, “the imposition of censorship signals the end of a free society, not its principle” and that it is proven how much humanity has gained with the gradual spread of the right to freedom of expression and how much we can lose if we allow it to continue to erode during this new digital phase of the old conflict it maintains with authority. Our author believes that, given the progressive broadening of the scope of the hate speech and precarious protection bans offered by European human rights laws, this trend is particularly disturbing for the future of freedom of expression in the European Union.

In theory, the Internet should have made freedom of expression invincible, sending censorship to the dump of history. However, as 16th-century Europeans were able to see, witnesses to the upheavals caused by the Guttenberg printing press and the Lutheran Reformation, new disruptive communication technologies are so likely to cause major disruptions in the social and political order as they are to bring progress and illustration. Because the Internet, which was initially received as an unstoppable force that would accelerate the advancement of freedom and democracy around the world, by favoring access to free, equal and lacking communication, made the new autocracies react quickly and that democracies questioned whether the internet should really be seen more as a blessing than a curse.

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