F5(a). Process for responding to government demands to restrict content or accounts

Please make sure you have read the note on transparency reporting indicators before using this indicator.

The company should clearly disclose its process for responding to government demands (including judicial orders) to remove, filter, or restrict content or accounts.

Elements:

1. Does the company clearly disclose its process for responding to non-judicial government demands?
2. Does the company clearly disclose its process for responding to court orders?
3. Does the company clearly disclose its process for responding to government demands from foreign jurisdictions?
4. Do the company’s explanations clearly disclose the legal basis under which it may comply with government demands?
5. Does the company clearly disclose that it carries out due diligence on government demands before deciding how to respond?
6. Does the company commit to push back on inappropriate or overbroad demands made by governments?
7. Does the company provide clear guidance or examples of implementation of its process of responding to government demands?

Account / user account – A collection of data associated with a particular user of a given computer system, service, or platform. At a minimum, the user account comprises a username and password, which are used to authenticate the user’s access to his/her data.

Account restriction / restrict a user’s account — Limitation, suspension, deactivation, deletion, or removal of a specific user account or permissions on a user’s account.

Clearly disclose(s) — The company presents or explains its policies or practices in its public-facing materials in a way that is easy for users to find and understand.

Content – The information contained in wire, oral, or electronic communications (e.g., a conversation that takes place over the phone or face-to-face; the text written and transmitted in an SMS or email; photos, links, or text posted on social media).

Content restriction — An action the company takes that renders an instance of user-generated content invisible or less visible on the platform or service. This action could involve removing the content entirely or take a less absolute form, such as as hiding it from only certain users (eg inhabitants of some country or people under a certain age), limiting users’ ability to interact with it (eg making it impossible to “like”), adding counterspeech to it (eg corrective information on anti-vaccine posts), or reducing the amount of amplification provided by the platform’s curation systems.

Court orders – Orders issued by a court. They include court orders in criminal and civil cases.

Government demands — This includes demands from government ministries or agencies, law enforcement, and court orders in criminal and civil cases.

Non-judicial government demands — These are requests that come from government entities that are not judicial bodies, judges, or courts. They can include requests from government ministries, agencies, police departments, police officers (acting in official capacity), and other non-judicial government offices, authorities, or entities.

Indicator guidance: Companies often receive demands from governments to remove, filter, or restrict access to content and accounts. These requests can come from government agencies, law enforcement, and courts (both domestic and foreign). We expect companies to publicly disclose their processes for responding to these types of demands. Companies should disclose the legal reasons why it would comply with a government demand, as well as disclose a clear commitment to push back on overly broad demands.

Note that our definition of “government demands” includes those that come through a “non-judicial” process, such as orders from law enforcement, as well as civil cases made by private parties that come through civil courts. Takedown requests that are made via organized processes like the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act or the European Right to be Forgotten ruling are defined as “private processes” and are evaluated in F5b below.

• Company transparency report
• Company law enforcement guidelines
• Company annual reports