Response by the Montreal AI Ethics Institute to the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Online Content Moderation

Diversity in content moderation is essential: The institute recommends ensuring greater diversity in the content moderation process itself, recognizing that who makes moderation decisions affects what gets removed and why.

Platforms must be transparent about how content gets ranked and promoted: MAIEI calls for increased transparency into content-ranking algorithms, addressing a gap where users don't understand why certain posts appear more prominently than others.

Cultural context matters for content decisions: The recommendations emphasize that platforms should account for cultural differences in determining what constitutes acceptable online behavior, rather than applying one-size-fits-all moderation rules globally.

Users deserve clarity on automated versus human decisions: Platforms should clearly disclose whether user-reported content is reviewed by automated systems or humans, helping people understand how their complaints are actually processed.

Transparency about content moderation data is lacking: The institute recommends platforms provide more public data on types of content removed, moderator backgrounds, and appeal processes—currently, users and researchers have limited visibility into these critical operations.