The purpose of this session is to present the findings from our yearlong global consultation process aimed at advancing the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, which seek to hold companies accountable by pushing them to publish numbers, notify users of content decisions, and ensure that appeals (due process) are available in every instance.

Throughout the past few years, as tech companies have taken on an increasingly complicated role in policing the world’s speech, the demand for greater transparency in content moderation has grown—while at the same time, and particularly during the pandemic, the opacity with which the world’s largest platforms make certain policy and moderation decisions seems to be growing as well.

In 2020, a coalition of 11 organizations from several countries embarked on a consultation process aimed at improving the Principles. We received written submissions and/or spoke with groups and individuals from varying backgrounds from more than 40 countries. We will soon issue a report with our findings, and launch a set of revised principles for the next era.

As the situation is so frequently changing, we would like to use this session as an opportunity to hear from various stakeholders on the applicability of the Principles in their cultural context, as well as the potential for the Principles to be utilized in regulatory regimes. We are also interested in fomenting open discussion on furthering transparency demands to companies.

We have been working together online for the past three years, so we're fairly practiced at doing this well. We will utilize Zoom (or equivalent) to facilitate virtual discussion, and will reach out on social media in advance of the discussion to ensure broad participation in the conversation, both prior to and during.