Creating transparency frameworks

Transparency and accountability are key to a strong safety approach. They reassure users that you are meeting your stated safety goals and help educate and empower users to act when safety concerns arise.

This section explains the steps you can take to be more open and transparent. It gives advice on reporting measures and provides examples of transparency reporting. It also lists considerations for carrying out consultation.

On this page:

• Transparency reporting
• External oversight and advice
• Consulting with stakeholders
• More advice and resources
• More Safety by Design foundations

Regularly sharing updates on safety measures builds trust and increases awareness and understanding.

It is also increasingly becoming a requirement by regulators across the globe for online service providers to publicly report on safety practices and processes. Australia’s Online Safety Act can require online service providers to report on how they are meeting the Government’s Basic Online Safety Expectations. The requirement is designed to improve providers’ safety standards and improve transparency and accountability. However, you should improve transparency proactively, rather than wait for regulators to mandate it.

Australia’s industry codes and standards require you to publish certain safety policies and practices. It also puts in place annual reporting requirements on some services (either proactively, or at eSafety’s request).

To build safety into a platform holistically, it’s important to assess the full range of potential online harms that may occur and embed protections accordingly. 

Transparency reporting helps communicate these efforts to an organisation’s stakeholders.

Transparency reporting measures on the enforcement of community standards and moderation of online harms must cover both content and activity. This should include meaningful analyses of metrics such as:

• abuse data and reports
• the effectiveness of detection, moderation and remediation efforts
• the extent to which community standards and terms of service are upheld and continuously improved through enforcement.

Importantly, transparency information should not be combined across multiple services provided by the same company. Each service may have distinct policies, tools and processes.

See for example:

• XBox
• Microsoft
• Snap
• Meta
• Zoom

To find out more about different types of online safety information you can provide to your users, see Empowering users to stay safe online.

Special consideration for children and young people

Transparency reporting should detail age and user demographics (in line with privacy laws about data collection). It should also include information and statistics on moderation, escalation and enforcement practices as they have been applied to children, particularly in the context of:

• non-consensual sharing of intimate images
• child sexual abuse material
• child sexual exploitation, including sextortion
• cyberbullying
• self-harm and eating disorders
• any other inappropriate content, such as content that has been flagged as sexualising a child and subsequently removed.

It should also include the risks associated with mixing different age groups in the same online spaces.

More ways to enhance transparency efforts

• Use global human rights instruments and standards.
• Consult with external experts and advisors to encourage meaningful discussions.
• Seek independent evaluation using real data and information to uncover details such as mistakes and biases.
• Account for a diverse range of information sources.
• Create a global dialogue with users in a way that considers local nuances and values.
• Ensure data sets provide meaningful insights on any impacts to users.
• Incorporate expert human review.
• Understand and report on a broader cross section of harms – and the intersection of harms – including all seven outlined in the Safety by Design categories. See How online platforms can be misused for abuse.

Open engagement with a wide range of users, including experts and key stakeholders, can help you develop, interpret and apply safety standards. Transparent consultation practices help to keep organisations accountable to their users.

Consulting with children and young people

Children’s safety and rights should be a priority for all leadership teams, and an important consideration for developing, applying and evaluating a company’s safety policies and standards.  

The UN General Comment on the Rights of the Child recognises that the best interests of children need to be considered when making decisions on the provision, regulation, design and management of the digital environment.  

Consultation with children and young people is an important step in this process. It allows children and young people to provide input into the products or services they use.  

You can also go further by co-creating with children and young people, which involves deep engagement during all stages of the design and decision-making process. This can help to ensure safety policies and standards genuinely reflect children and young people’s lived experiences and needs.

When planning consultations and co-creations with children and young people, it is important to include ethical considerations to avoid any harm through participation.

To help you get started, eSafety consulted with young people to develop a vision for young people and lays out what they want in terms of online safety and how they expect the technology industry to help users navigate online environments freely and safely. eSafety also partnered with the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University on research that identified best practice in youth engagement and insight into how young people can be supported to be safer online. The six best practice principles from the research are:

• diverse and inclusive  
• youth-led and supportive
• action-oriented
• collaborative
• rewarding
• fun and engaging.

Learn about technical tools that can help manage children’s safety online.

Explore more advice and resources around transparency and accountability from a range of organisations, including:

• Access Now: Transparency Reporting Index
• Centre for Inclusive Design: The Benefit of Designing for Everyone
• Open Technology Institute: Transparency Reporting Toolkit: Content Takedown Reporting
• Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability Measures in Content Moderation    
• TTC Labs: How to design with trust, transparency and control for young people
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): Transparency reporting on terrorist and violent extremist content online.