We’re pleased to present Automattic’s 22nd biannual transparency report. In its (virtual) pages, you’ll find many categories you’ve seen in previous editions: government removal and information requests, intellectual property statistics, and privacy reports. However, as part of our compliance with the Digital Services Act, this report—which covers the period of January through June 2024—will also include several new pages.
The DSA at Automattic
The Digital Services Act (DSA) is a piece of European Union legislation that came into effect for smaller platforms in February 2024. The DSA emphasizes transparency, and seeks to inform users about how online platforms make content-related decisions. The DSA also regulates how platforms balance freedom of expression with the removal of harmful content. Its underlying principle of prioritizing transparency naturally aligns with our philosophy at Automattic, where we believe that accountability is key to democratizing publishing.
Given their distinct functions and separate user bases, our platforms—WordPress.com and Tumblr—are categorized differently under the DSA, and so have different responsibilities under this regulation. Along with the new reporting areas detailed below, our Trust and Safety teams now offer more comprehensive explanations to users whose sites or content have been removed. Both platforms are also required to track additional statistics on government takedown orders from EU member states. Additionally, Tumblr is now mandated to accept user appeals regarding the moderation decisions made by our Trust & Safety team.
New Reporting Areas
Some of the requirements legislated by the DSA were already being met (or exceeded) as a matter of policy here at Automattic. For instance, while the DSA requires an annual transparency report, we have issued ours twice yearly for more than a decade. Similarly, we have always published how many takedown orders and information requests are received from EU member state governments, statistics the DSA now mandates.
That said, there are some notable changes to highlight. Most significantly, we’re including two new categories: Illegal Content Notices (for both WordPress.com and Tumblr), and Appeals (for Tumblr only). In addition to those major additions, we’ve expanded a number of our existing categories. Takedown orders received from EU member state countries now include additional details, including the originating country and what type of content was at issue. You’ll also see reporting on median response times across several existing categories.
Challenges with New Types of Reports
These new pages are our first iteration of collecting this data. Please note that because the DSA came into effect on February 17, the information we are presenting was collected from February 17 onward. The period of January 1–February 16 is not reported in these new pages.
In collecting this new data, we realized that our on-site reporting flows needed improvements. The reporting forms on both platforms caused confusion for users, resulting in many invalid reports. For instance, of the 362 Illegal Content notices we received for Tumblr, only four were sufficiently precise, adequately substantiated, and reported content that we wouldn’t have removed due to a violation of our User Guidelines. Notably, 206 of these notices—more than half—were not from the EU, or were not reporting a law being broken. On WordPress.com, none of the reported sites were removed solely based on the Illegal Content reports.
To address these issues, we’ve made some changes on our reporting forms to help reporters submit complete and actionable notices. Tumblr’s Illegal Content Notice form now features a dropdown menu of violation reasons. This feature was not implemented during the current reporting period, and we are continuing to refine the list of violation reasons. However, because the dropdown has already proven helpful on Tumblr, we plan to add this to WordPress.com’s reporting form as well.
Overall, we will continue iterating on this process while experimenting with what works best. We’re learning from our experiences and adapting our processes as we receive additional guidance from the EU regarding DSA requirements.
We welcome you to take a look through the data. And as always, let us know if you have comments, suggestions, or requests.
Transparency Report