Content Moderation in APAC: Workshopping Legal Trends & Implementation

Part 1 - Lead Organizer

Contact Person

Jean-Jacques Sahel

Organization / Affiliation (Please state "Individual" if appropriate)

Google

Designation

Senior Manager, Government Affairs and Public Policy

Gender

Male

Economy of Residence

Singapore

Primary Stakeholder Group

Private Sector

Part 2 - Session Proposal

Your proposal is for

Main Conference (Day 1-3)

Session Title

Content Moderation in APAC: Workshopping Legal Trends & Implementation

Track

Inclusion Trust

Session Format

Array

Where do you plan to organize your session?

Virtual / online

Specific Issues for Discussion

APAC is witnessing a rising number of laws regulating online content. This increase is driven by a trend toward governments exerting greater control over online activity within their jurisdictions. Many of these laws loosely define illegal content, are accompanied by requirements for ever-quicker content takedowns, and impose harsh penalties for non-compliance. All are raising difficult questions for civil society advocates, academics, and tech companies alike. In this session, experts from Google will highlight trends in content regulation laws and legal takedown requests across APAC, share their experiences with implementation, and examine the real world impacts and risks of the new wave of laws dealing with online content. The session will use real world case studies to give participants the chance to compare and contrast the extent and impact of different laws regulating online content in the region, and will walk participants through a number of the difficult questions raised by content moderation and legal requests for removals within the region. The session aims to facilitate information-sharing on the best approaches to handling these new content regulations in APAC.

Describe the Relevance of Your Session to APrIGF

Laws regulating online content hold the potential to exert a significant impact on user trust, access to information and freedom of expression, in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. In practice, these laws can often shift the responsibility for determining the legality of content and ensuring due process on to tech companies, and create a significant risk of over-removal and censorship. This session will contribute to advancing policy discussions around best practice for responsible content moderation, and will aim to foster a dialogue among all stakeholders to consider and discuss the different considerations that online content providers must balance when making decisions on online content in APAC. It will promote multi-stakeholder models for supporting content responsibility and free expression online by bringing together a group of passionate experts in online content moderation and will invite the APrIGF community to solve real world content regulation problems and devise their own methodology for reaching decisions.

Methodology / Agenda

The session will be first composed of a showcase of content regulation trends in the region by Googlers working to monitor and implement the new wave of regulations, while ensuring the respect of users’ rights. It will then invite the APrIGF community to participate in “breakout rooms” to workshop real world content regulation problems and devise their own approaches for reaching decisions. Participants will then present their decisions and rationale for those decisions to the session as a whole, with the hope of sharing recommendations for follow-up and an ongoing multi-stakeholder dialogue on these issues after the AprIGF.

Please provide 3 subject matter tags that best describe your session.

#FreedomofExpression, #Contentregulation, #Contentmoderation

Moderators & Speakers Info (Please complete where possible)

Please explain the rationale for choosing each of the above contributors to the session.

Jean-Jacques Sahel is a member of Google's Public Policy Team focusing on content issues in APAC Punkhuri, Amy and Kieran are members of Google Trust & Safety team focusing on content regulation in APAC.