Civil Rights Organizations Recommend Easy-to-Use Hate Speech Appeals, More Transparency
Some 40 civil and human rights groups recommended policies Thursday for internet platforms to combat “hateful” online activity (see 1810190054). Recommendations include: prohibition of hateful activities; sufficient enforcement personnel; an easy-to-use appeal process; transparency reports; experts to train staff; and…
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independent boards to judge progress. The groups, which included Color of Change, Free Press and the Southern Poverty Law Center, said they will grade platforms on those criteria for the next several months. Google and Facebook are major internet platforms that in the past few months started issuing comprehensive transparency reports for taking down content that violates community guidelines, New America’s Open Technology Institute reported. Community guideline-based decisions made OTI’s list of most common takedown categories. Others were: government and legal content demands; copyright requests; trademark requests; network shutdowns and service interruptions; and right-to-be-forgotten delisting requests. OTI surveyed 24 international and 46 U.S. internet companies and telcos. OTI said 35 “reported on content-related demands and takedowns.” Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft scored well on the transparency report, but Apple, Amazon, AT&T and Verizon didn't. Facebook reported in all but one category: right-to-be-forgotten delisting requests. Google reported in all but the trademark requests category. Microsoft reported in all but trademark requests and network shutdowns and service interruptions. Twitter reported in all but network shutdowns and service interruptions and right-to-be-forgotten delisting requests. Apple, Amazon, AT&T and Verizon reported in one of six categories: government and legal content demands.