Tech watchdogs call on Facebook and Google for transparency around censored content

If a company like Facebook can’t even understand why its moderation tools work they do, then its users certainly don’t have a fighting shot. Anyway, that’s the idea behind what a coalition of digital rights groups are calling the Santa Clara Principles, “a set of minimum standards” aimed at Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech companies that moderate the content published on their platforms.

The suggested guidelines grew out of a set of events addressing “Content Moderation and Removal at Scale,” the second of which is taking place today in Washington D.C. The group participating in these conversations shared the goal of coming up with a suggested ruleset for how major tech companies should disclose what content is being censored, why it is being censored and how much speech is censored overall.

“Users deserve more transparency and greater accountability from platforms that play an outsized role—in Myanmar, Australia, Europe, and China, as well as in marginalized communities in the U.S. and elsewhere—in deciding what can be said on the Internet,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Director for International Freedom of Expression Jillian C. York said.

As the Center for Democracy and Technology explains, the Santa Clara principles (PDF) ask tech companies to disclose three categories of information:

• Numbers (of posts removed, accounts suspended);
• Notice (to users about content removals and account suspensions); and
• Appeals (for users impacted by content removals or account suspensions).

“The Santa Clara Principles are the product of years of effort by privacy advocates to push tech companies to provide users with more disclosure and a better understanding of how content policing works,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo added.

“Facebook and Google have taken some steps recently to improve transparency, and we applaud that. But it’s not enough. We hope to see the companies embrace the Santa Clara Principles and move the bar on transparency and accountability even higher.”

Participants in drafting the Santa Clara Principles include the ACLU Foundation of Northern California, Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and a handful of scholars from departments studying ethics and communications.

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