Post-election hearing

Zuckerberg calls on Congress to impose content moderation transparency standards

​Mark Zuckerberg

If tech platforms had to publish transparency standards, "the people who are responsible for holding all of us accountable, whether it's journalists, Congress, academics, could have an apples-to-apples comparison about how all the different companies are doing," said Mark Zuckerberg.

Image: C-SPAN

During Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called on Congress to pass regulations that would require tech platforms to issue regular transparency reports, laying out the actions they've taken on violative content.

"That way, t he people who are responsible for holding all of us accountable, whether it's journalists, Congress, academics, could have an apples- to-a pples comparison about how all the different companies are doing," Zuckerberg said. He also suggested that such a law "require that companies even maintain a certain level of effectiveness."

That level of detail was new for Zuckerberg, who has, in the past, called for Section 230 to be modified to increase transparency, but has stopped short of saying exactly what he believes such transparency should look like. Facebook already releases intermittent transparency reports, showing not only the amount of content it's taking action on, but also what percentage of that content is caught by automatic filters, what percentage of it is appealed and what percentage is restored upon appeal.

Such a scientific dissection of these actions is complex even for a company of Facebook's size. It would be far more challenging for smaller platforms, leading some to argue that Zuckerberg's proposal is, in and of itself, anticompetitive. "This is why he wants to make it a requirement for everyone. The resources it would require from smaller platforms is now a competitive advantage for Facebook," Ifeoma Ozoma, a former Facebook policy staffer, tweeted Tuesday . "Him saying it would provide apples to apples comparisons is wrong. Also, [without] context, removal numbers are useless."

Issie Lapowsky

Issie Lapowsky ( @issielapowsky ) is Protocol's chief correspondent, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. She also oversees Protocol's fellowship program. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University's Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing.

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Fintech

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The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

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Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

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Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

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Farewell from Protocol

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Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich ) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

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Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

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Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

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