F6. Data about government demands to restrict for content and accounts

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

The company should regularly publish data about government demands (including judicial orders) to remove, filter, or restrict content and accounts.

Elements:

1. Does the company break out the number of demands it receives by country?
2. Does the company list the number of accounts affected?
3. Does the company list the number of pieces of content or URLs affected?
4. Does the company list the types of subject matter associated with the demands it receives?
5. Does the company list the number of demands that come from different legal authorities?
6. Does the company list the number of demands it knowingly receives from government officials to restrict content or accounts through unofficial processes?
7. Does the company list the number of demands with which it complied?
8. Does the company publish the original demands or disclose that it provides copies to a public third-party archive?
9. Does the company report this data at least once a year?
10. Can the data be exported as a structured data file?

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.

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).

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.

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

Public third-party archive —Ideally, companies publish information about the requests they receive so that the public has a better understanding of how content gets restricted on the platform. Companies may provide information about the requests they receive to a third-party archive, such as Lumen (formerly called Chilling Effects), which is an independent research project that manages a publicly available database of requests for removal of online content.This type of repository helps researchers and the public understand the types of content that are requested for removal, as well as gain a better understanding of legitimate and illegitimate requests.

Structured data — “Data that resides in fixed fields within a record or file. Relational databases and spreadsheets are examples of structured data. Although data in XML files are not fixed in location like traditional database records, they are nevertheless structured, because the data are tagged and can be accurately identified.” Conversely, unstructured data is data that “does not reside in fixed locations. The term generally refers to free-form text, which is ubiquitous. Examples are word processing documents, PDF files, e-mail messages, blogs, Web pages and social sites.” Sources: PC Mag Encyclopedia: “structured data” http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/52162/structured-data

“unstructured data” http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/53486/unstructured-data

Unofficial processes —Processes or channels through which the government make demands or requests about content or account restrictions instead of through official processes, such as law or regulation. For example, a local official may make an order or protest on certain content through an informal channel. 

Indicator guidance: Companies frequently receive demands from governments to remove, filter, or restrict content or accounts. We expect a company to regularly publish data about the number and type of government demands it receives, and the number of such requests with which it complies. Companies may receive these demands through official processes, such as with a court order, or through informal channels, like through a company’s flagging system intended to allow private individuals to report content that violates the terms of service. Companies should be transparent about the nature of these requests. If a company knows that a request is coming from a government entity or court, the company should disclose it as part of its government requests reporting. Disclosing this data helps the public gain a greater understanding of the relationship between companies and governments in policing content online, and helps the public hold companies and governments accountable for their obligations to respect and protect freedom of expression rights.

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 nonetheless lose points if it fails to meet the standards specified in all of the above elements. This represents a situation where the law causes companies to fall short of best practice, and we encourage companies to advocate for laws that enable them to fully respect users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy.

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