New Resource From EFF: Onlinecensorship.org Tracks Content Takedowns by Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Sites

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Visualizing Impact launched Onlinecensorship.org today, a new platform to document the who, what, and why of content takedowns on social media sites. The project, made possible by a 2014 Knight News Challenge award, will address how social media sites moderate user-generated content and how free expression is affected across the globe.
Controversies over content takedowns seem to bubble up every few weeks, with users complaining about censorship of political speech, nudity, LGBT content, and many other subjects. The passionate debate about these takedowns reveals a larger issue: social media sites have an enormous impact on the public sphere, but are ultimately privately owned companies. Each corporation has their own rules and systems of governance that control users’ content, while providing little transparency about how these decisions are made.
At Onlinecensorship.org, users themselves can report on content takedowns from Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and YouTube. By cataloging and analyzing aggregated cases of social media censorship, Onlinecensorship.org seeks to unveil trends in content removals, provide insight into the types of content being taken down, and learn how these takedowns impact different communities of users.

Direct to Onlinecensorship.org
Read the Complete EFF Launch Announcement
See Also: Harvard’s Groundbreaking Project Documenting Online Content Removals Changes Name to Lumen, Reflecting Expanded Mission and International Scope (November 2, 2015)

Filed under: Awards, News, Patrons and Users, Video Recordings