Mapping platform rules to transparency categories reveals classification challenges
Towards More Granular Reasoning: Mapping the DSA Transparency Database Taxonomy to Platform Terms and Conditions Using Large Language Models
Artificial IntelligenceComputers and Society
Summary
Every time an online platform moderates content, it must explain why using a public database with broad reason categories. The authors studied how well these categories match actual platform rules by analyzing 31 services with a large language model. They found that the categories work differently depending on the type of platform and often overlap, making it hard to pick just one reason for moderation. They suggest creating more detailed, platform-specific categories to improve clarity in these reports.
What this means in practice
- •For platform policy teams: Improve moderation reporting by tailoring reason categories to specific service types for clearer transparency.
- •For legal compliance officers: Use refined mappings to better align platform terms with transparency requirements under the Digital Services Act.
Authors
Alyson Ranucci, Eline Leijten, David Graus
Abstract
Article 24(5) of the Digital Services Act (DSA) requires providers of online platforms to submit every content moderation decision they make, with a corresponding Statement of Reasons (SoR), to the DSA Transparency Database (DSA-TDB). Such decisions are classified against seventeen high-level attribute categories that categorize the primary reason for the moderation decision. Because over 99.8% of statements cite a violation of the provider's own terms and conditions rather than a legal provision, the database is overwhelmingly a record of contractual enforcement using catch-all reporting; however, whether its categories actually describe those contractual rules well has not been examined. In this paper, we map the terms and conditions (T&C) of 31 designated online services against the DSA-TDB's high-level category taxonomy using a few-shot GPT-4.1 classifier over 447 policy documents. The analysis concerns how T&C rules are represented in the taxonomy, not how they are enforced. Two findings emerge. First, high-level category applicability varies sharply by service type: unsafe products account for 17.5% of e-commerce assignments and 0.2% of adult-platform assignments, and negative effects on civic discourse reaches 9.9% within the Meta family but is absent from adult platforms, Booking.com, and Wikipedia. Second, the categories have notable overlap among sub-category specifications, which makes assigning a single high-level category to a decision difficult. We argue that catch-all reporting is plausibly in part a consequence of the DSA-TDB's schema and attribute design, and recommend a schema that is differentiated by service type with more mandatory attributes derived inductively from platform governance language.