Online media netiquette
In 2017, the Press Council launched the “Netiquette” at the national level in collaboration with the National Youth Service and the “BeeSecure” action with the aim of promoting a safer, responsible and positive use of information technologies to the general public.
This initiative follows the “Share Respect – Stop Online Hate Speech” campaign organized in 2016 by the National Youth Service, which aimed to raise awareness among young people about the dangers of the Internet and to counteract the increasing hate speech on the Internet.
The Netiquette (from “Net” and “etiquette”) is a guide to good conduct for users of emails, online contribution forums and social networks. In other words, it is a charter of politeness and good manners on the Internet with an ethical or deontological purpose. Its primary objective is to promote mutual respect online, to remind people that the digital space is not a legal vacuum and that everyone is committed to taking responsibility on the Internet.
The Netiquette also addresses Luxembourg online media to integrate their general conditions of use and therefore allow all media to apply the same rules.
Thus, the Netiquette warns Internet users that the following types of comments on the Internet are unacceptable:
- Illegal content such as racist, discriminatory, sexist, pornographic or violence-glorifying contributions, such as the invocation of hate or violence and insults;
- Inappropriate content such as offensive or personal attacks;
- Spam, lonely hearts advertisements, publicity, other commercial content or false information.
If these rules are not respected, the Netiquette allows the following rights:
- to warn the person responsible to refrain from making such comments;
- to delete, hide, edit or not to publish posts;
- to block the person responsible from our website;
- or to take any other reasonable, also legal, measures.
Luxembourg is one of the first European countries to adopt such a Netiquette at the national level.
The website www.netiquette.lu presents the Netiquette in five languages (Luxembourgish, French, German, English and Portuguese)