Wyden, Colleagues Introduce Legislation to Increase Multilingual Content Moderation Enforcement and Transparency
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden said today he and Senate colleagues have introduced legislation that would improve multilingual large language models, automated decision-making systems, and content moderation practices to better protect non-English speaking communities online.
“Big tech companies are failing millions of people by allowing scams, fraud and other slime to spread in Spanish, Vietnamese and Chinese, where the same posts in English would be filtered out. At the same time, tech companies are fueling crises abroad by refusing to invest adequate resources in their overseas offices,” Wyden said. “Every community in Oregon and nationwide deserves the same protections from Big Tech as their English-speaking neighbors. I’m proud to join my colleagues to introduce this bill, which would protect online communities, no matter what language they speak.”
The Language-Inclusive Support and Transparency for Online Services Act would require online platforms to consistently communicate and enforce their policies across languages and transparently report on the processes used to enforce policies. Additionally, the bill would authorize funding to the United States Agency for International Development to research the prevalence and impact of online hate, abuse, and misleading or false information in languages other than English.
The legislation was led by U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M. Alongside Wyden, the bill was cosponsored by U.S. Senators Bob Menendez, D-N.J., Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii.
The bill is supported by FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya and is endorsed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Equis Research, Free Press, National Hispanic Media Coalition, and Media Matters Action Network.
The full text of the bill is here.
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