Who has your back? Compiled a rating of transparency of censorship of Internet services

The annual report of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is presented with the transparency rating for the censorship user for 16 most popular online sites.

In the face of the growing demand by governments to remove user content under the auspices of the fight against hatred with statements and extremism, some social networks and app stores, including Apple App Store, Google Play Store and YouTube, have turned into transparency leaders. These companies publicly disclose how often and why they fulfill requests for removal of content, and also notify users about receiving requests for removing their posts and other content. This was reported in the report of the Electronic Frontier Fund.

Other platforms, in particular Facebook and Instagram, could not introduce really meaningful practices and notifications that inform users about the most important details, for example - which governments have turned and why, and naturally ended up among outsiders.

Previously, the annual reports of “Who Has Your Back?”, Which EFF published since 2011, have focused on government requirements for user content. But this year, EFF considers as large technological companies respond to censorship requested by the government.

Freedom of speech on the Internet is increasingly regulated not by governments, but by owners of social networks , whose policies of moderation of content and community standards are often opaque and seem arbitrary. The user deserves to know if the government demanded to delete his message on Facebook or Twitter, how to appeal on censorship decisions, and what attracted the attention of government officials to the message. The rates are high, especially in an unstable political environment or in repressive regimes. Requests for removal of content or blocking the pages of journalists, activists or dissidents are often a prelude to further government intervention.

“At a time when governments around the world exerting more and more pressure on the online platforms in the fight against unwanted statements, transparency in moderation of content is necessary than ever to protect freedom of speech on the Internet,” said Gillian K. York, director of the International Freedom of Expression EFF.

EFF appreciated public politicians in 16 companies and appropriated stars in five categories: transparency in official queries Removing content, transparency of the rules for moderation of the platform, providing meaningful notification, appeal resolution and limiting geographical coverage of censorship. All categories are new this year.

To earn a star in the first two categories, companies must regularly publish detailed information about government requests, for example, in reports in the order of transparency.

“If and when the companies perform government requests to remove content or block accounts, these solutions should be transparent for users and the general public,” said Genny Goebhart, EFF researcher.

Other categories evaluate whether the company offers the contesting process, notifies users about removing messages and blocking accounts and is reasonably minimizing the geographical coverage of censorship.

Two platforms that received five stars were app stores: Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Since these companies have only one type of content - applications, moderation and content management are necessary on a smaller scale than, say, on Facebook, and it is easier for them to meet the requirements of EFF reporting categories, but this does not undumain their merits ..

Another company that received five stars was YouTube. The report by YouTube (published by its maternal company Google) shows not only the number of government requests as a whole and in countries, but also details and the results of individual requests.

The Facebook and Ege of a subsidiary instagram have received only one of YouTube and other large social networks and technological companies. They do not satisfy the requirements for detailed reports on all government queries for removing content, and also do not give meaningful notifications about the removal of all categories of content or on the course of the disputing process removal of messages. Recently, Facebook has taken small steps to increase transparency, making internal moderation rules more public. But the fact that the most popular social network still does not provide users with comprehensive notifications and contesting capabilities, causes concern.

“It is gratifying that with some noticeable exceptions, more and more companies and platforms apply the principles of transparency, notifications, appeals and limited opportunities for censorship ordered by the government,” said Nate Cardozo, senior lawyer EFF. “Without these best practices, technological giants are too easy to abuse their power, silenting vulnerable authors, hiding how censorship is happening and who requires it.”

*** Evgenia Khotovitskaya, according to EFF materials ,

Especially for Roskomvoboda ***

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