Platform Policies Versus Human Rights Standards
Edoardo Celeste, Nicola Palladino, Dennis Redeker, Kinfe Yilma · 2023
Abstract This chapter empirically examines how five social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube—deal with the content governance dilemma and the question of which human rights standard to apply when moderating user content. It builds on previous chapters’ analyses of relevant human rights standards in international law and civil society-issued documents to elucidate to what extent substantial and procedural demands are met by the platforms. After an analysis of platform policies—specifically the human rights commitments included in them, the chapter examines substantive content moderation trends in a comparative way. Thereafter, procedural practices of content moderation including transparency reporting and automated content moderation are comparatively discussed. The chapter finds a relatively high degree of convergence among the platforms on a number of practices.