TRUST IN ALTERNATIVE GOVERNORS: EXPLORING USER CONFIDENCE IN COMPANIES, STATES AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN PLATFORM CONTENT MODERATION

Abstract

Social media platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok are the “new governors” or “custodians” of the Internet (Klonick 2018; Gillespie 2018). How they moderate global speech online affects the communication practices of billions of people and it can make or break social movements and political resistance, and generally be a critical risk factor for human rights violations. These platforms are increasingly joined by states, international organizations, civil society, journalists and others in defining and interpreting the limitations of speech online, be it through legislation, guidelines or by helping platforms to distinguish misinformation from legitimate content. In parallel, researchers ponder questions concerning the legitimacy of various approaches of content moderation (Haggart & Keller 2021; Suzor 2019), which must extend to the question of which actors ought to fulfill which function in the moderation of content. A legitimate content moderation constellation (and potentially division of labor) is arguably one that is perceived to be legitimate by the “governed” themselves (for whatever qualities are appraised by them). As of today, however, we have little empirical knowledge about what users actually think about content moderation. The current paper presents novel empirical evidence on how users perceive platform content moderation and how they perceive content moderation roles of different governors of speech. The quantitative analysis is based on a survey of more than 15,000 Facebook and Instagram users in 33 countries in the Global South and Eastern Europe, which was conducted in six languages in late 2022 and early 2023.