We Need To Shine A Light On Private Online Censorship | Techdirt

amarashar's bookmarks 2018-01-31

Summary:

However, almost no one is publishing data about what we're talking about here: voluntary takedowns of content by companies based on their own terms of service (TOS). Yet especially now, as private censorship gets even more aggressive, the need for transparency also increases. This need has led to calls from a variety of corners for companies to report on content moderation. For example, a working group of the Freedom Online Coalition, composed of representatives from industry, civil society, academia, and government, called for meaningful transparency about companies’ content takedown efforts, complaining that “there is very little transparency” around TOS enforcement mechanisms. The 2015 Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index found that every company surveyed received a failing grade with respect to reporting on TOS-based takedowns; the 2017 Index findings fared only slightly better. Finally, David Kaye, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, called for companies to “disclose their policies and actions that implicate freedom of expression.” Specifically, he observed that “there are … gaps in corporate disclosure of statistics concerning volume, frequency and types of request for content removals and user data, whether because of State-imposed restrictions or internal policy decisions.”

Link:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180130/22212639127/we-need-to-shine-light-private-online-censorship.shtml

From feeds:

Music and Digital Media » Techdirt.
Berkman Klein » gweber's bookmarks
Harmful Speech » amarashar's bookmarks

Tags:

Date tagged:

01/31/2018, 16:43

Date published:

01/31/2018, 04:13