Great Expectations: What Research Expects from Platforms and Platforms from Research
Content governance is a hard job. YouTube and other platforms are increasingly between a rock and a hard place: they have to push back against state actors, de-platform coordinated inauthentic behavior, fight human rights abuses on their platforms all while being attractive communication spaces. Their interaction with governments is especially complex: Should they appease authoritative states and ensure at least a certain level of communicative freedoms for their users or take a principled stand? As the world evolves, the internal rules are also becoming substantially more complex. Deciding what should go and what can stay is no easy task. So how does YouTube navigate the challenges of finding the right balance between stabilising revenue, coping with advertiser’s pressure, improving content quality and keeping creators happy? What role do emerging regulatory approaches from the European Union play in all these strategic decisions? And importantly: What part does science play in this complex constellation? What do platforms expect from science – and science from platforms?