Facebook, Twitter, Google under scrutiny for removed content

Not-for-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of digital rights groups have called on big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google, to explain decisions behind removed content as well as improve appeals policies.

They published a document on Monday titled “The Santa Clara Principles,” asking tech companies to disclose details concerning “content removals, account suspensions, appeals, and other practices that impact free expression,” the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), another group in the coalition, said in a statement Monday.

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The groups suggest in the document that relevant information should be divided into three categories — numbers, notice and appeal — and submitted in a quarterly report in an “openly licensed, machine-readable format.”

The Santa Clara Principles comes on the heels of a recent Facebook update to its Community Standards guidelines intended to explain how content moderators deal with objectionable material.

It also expanded appeals rules so that users can now challenge Facebook about the removal of a piece of content.

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