thanks a lot for the repost!

I don't have Portuguese roots but my parents liked the name, and I lived in Lisbon for a few months, so can speak um bocado :)

Thank you and great point! We did not but I suppose we could find the info in the DSA Transparency Database, at least for Spanish and Portuguese. The issue I foresee though is that we'll only have info for moderation in EU countries and nothing on Latin America. Still, worth a look, thanks again!

Merci beaucoup pour le repost :)

muito obrigado :)

@oii.ox.ac.uk @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social @umassamherst.bsky.social @umich.edu

Finally tagging scholars whose work inspired this piece: @monaelswah.bsky.social @farhana-shahid.bsky.social @nicp.bsky.social @cgoanta.bsky.social Your feedback is most welcome!

This would also not have been possible without data collection efforts led by @jurgenpfeffer.bsky.social and without @claesdevreese.bsky.social @aurman21.bsky.social who made me aware of the DSA moderator count data on here a while back, thank you all!

Had a blast working on this paper with my wonderful coauthors @deeliu97.bsky.social @antisomniac.bsky.social @ze.vin Ralph @ethanz.bsky.social @computermacgyver.bsky.social

We also issue a recommendation: platforms and regulators should improve transparency by reporting moderator counts with context (eg content volume per language), ensure consistent reporting over time, and extend data coverage beyond EU languages.

So what? The main implication is that speakers of underserved languages likely receive less protection from online harms. Our analysis also nuances existing concerns: while Global South languages are consistently underserved, allocation for other non-English languages varies widely across platforms.

For languages with moderators, we normalize mod counts by content volume per language and find that platforms allocate moderation workforce disproportionately relative to content volume, with languages primarily spoken in the Global South (Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic) consistently underserved.

We also quantify the amount of EU-based users whose national language does not have moderators, and we’re talking about millions of users posting in languages with zero moderators.

Taking Twitter/X as an example, we then show that languages subject to moderation blind spots are generally widely spoken on social media, representing an average of 31% of all tweets during a one-day period in countries where they are the official language.

We first look at language coverage and find that while larger platforms such as YouTube and Meta have moderators in most EU languages, smaller platforms such as X and Snapchat have several language blind spots with no human moderators, particularly in Southern, Eastern and Northern Europe.

Concerns about underinvestment in non-English moderation have long circulated via whistleblower leaks, but they were never quantified. The EU’s Digital Services Act is a turning point, requiring platforms to disclose moderator counts per language, making cross-lingual comparison possible.