Twitter's content moderation on trial in Paris – POLITICO

Press play to listen to this article PARIS — A French court on Thursday will hear a case aimed at shedding light on Twitter’s best-kept secret: Just how much the social network invests in the fight against illegal content. The social media platform, pitted against a group of four NGOs including also SOS Racism, SOS Homophobia and the Union of French Jewish students, will argue before the Paris court of appeal that it should not have to disclose detailed information about internal processes. The case touches upon a core issue that has long haunted policymakers and researchers when it comes to platform regulation: The actual means — human and financial — allocated to the moderation of illegal and harmful content. So far, companies such as Twitter, Facebook and Google’s YouTube have been reluctant to make detailed and specific information public about the numbers of content moderators by country and/or language. According to the French NGOs, Twitter is not doing enough against hate speech online. In July, a court ordered the company to share very specific information about how it polices content — a first in Europe. The social media platform was required to provide “any administrative, contractual, technical or commercial document relating to material…
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