1. The company breaks out the number of requests it receives by country.
2. The company lists the number of accounts affected.
3. The company lists the number of pieces of content or URLs affected.
4. The company lists the types of subject matter associated with the requests it receives.
5. The company identifies the specific legal authority making the requests.
6. The company lists the number of requests it complied with.
7. The company either publishes the original requests or provides copies to a third-party archive such as Chilling Effects or a similar organization.
8. The company reports this data at least once a year.
9. The data reported by the company can be exported as a structured data file.
Guidance: This indicator examines company disclosure of data on the requests it receives from governments to remove content. Publicizing this data helps the public gain a greater understanding of how freedom of expression operates online, and it helps the public hold companies and governments accountable for their respective roles to respect and protect freedom of expression. For these reasons, we expect companies to regularly publish data about the government requests they receive to remove content.
In some cases, the law might prevent a company from disclosing information referenced in this indicator’s elements. For example, we expect companies to publish exact numbers rather than ranges of numbers. We acknowledge that laws sometimes prevent companies from doing so, and researchers will document situations where this is the case. But a company will lose points if it fails to meet all elements. This represents a situation where the law causes companies to be uncompetitive, and we encourage companies to advocate for laws that enable them to fully respect users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy.
Evaluation: This indicator is scored using a checklist, meaning companies can only receive full credit if their disclosure meets all elements in the checklist.
Potential sources:
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