Transparency is not a physical place

Hello everyone and a warm welcome to new subscribers from the Financial Times, Deutsche Welle and Khoros. Sending you — and affected moderators all over the world — elbow bumps during this difficult and contagious time. I've included a special COVID-19 section this week to guide you to relevant virus-related moderation stories.

As part of going freelance, I’ve made my calendar open to anyone who wants to have a chat (about work opportunities or otherwise). If you’re self-isolating or want to discuss EiM/moderation, put some time in — I'd love to find out more about you and what you're working on.

Onto this week’s newsletter — BW

🚖 Taken for a ride?

It’s the probably the closest we’re going to get to a content moderation theme park. TikTok this week revealed it will open a transparency centre in its LA offices where the public can examine its moderation practices and watch how its team operates.

As the announcement sets out, the centre will:

operate as a forum where observers will be able to provide meaningful feedback on our practices.

Although it is focused primarily on attracting outside experts and policymakers, anyone can walk in off the street in theory (it’s unclear at this stage whether there will be queues or height restrictions). The centre will open in early May.

Although it’s the first time that a company has done this for content moderation, it isn’t a new tactic for Chinese tech companies under pressure from regulators. Huawei opened a similar bricks-and-mortar centre in Brussels in early 2019 to 'facilitate communication between Huawei and key stakeholders on cybersecurity strategies and end-to-end cybersecurity’.