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Creating inclusive policies that consider the unique challenges faced by Iranian rights holders presents several difficulties. These gaps have been identified in companies’ terms of services, privacy policies, developers’ use policies, community guidelines, transparency reporting, market access and sanctions policies, and more. Below we describe the general gaps we observed in technology companies’ policies. They are not tailored for a specific company and are product agnostic:
flowchart LR
%% Colors %%
classDef yellow fill:#FFF72F,stroke:#FFF72F,color:#000
classDef white fill:#ffffff,stroke:#ffffff,color:#000
%% Power Imbalance %%
G3[Policy Gap]:::yellow
%% Engagement %%
G3 --> 1(**Inaccessible or Generalized Policies**):::white
G3 --> 2(Cultural and Contextual Gaps):::white
G3 --> 3(Lack of Methodological Transparency):::white
G3 --> 4(Distrust in Reporting and Remediation Mechanisms):::white
G3 --> 5(Transparency Report Limitations):::white
G3 --> 6(Disproportionate Technical Focus):::white
G3 --> 7(Lack of Crisis Guidelines):::white
G3 --> 8(Overly Broad Sanctions Approach):::white
Some policies, educational materials, safety tips, and user interfaces are unavailable or not easily accessible in Farsi. Translations that do exist tend to be low quality, leading to potential misinterpretation. This is especially true for social media community guidelines, which may prevent Iranians from accessing protections and affordances companies offer against harm. The categories of harm outlined by companies are often unclear or incomprehensible to Iranians.
Content moderation strategies, in both policy and enforcement, often overlook the specific cultural and contextual nuances of Iran. Increased use of automation in content moderation has exacerbated this challenge.
The methodology employed in policy creation is sometimes opaque, making it difficult to identify and address gaps, especially regarding how policymakers engage with Iranian users to understand their needs and reflect them in their companies’ policies.
There is distrust among Iranians about reporting mechanisms. Concerns range from fear of government discovery to beliefs that reporting is futile or ineffective, to lack of access to company decision-makers. When remediation processes exist, their accessibility to Iranians is questionable.
Data in transparency reports may exclude Iran, lack granularity compared to other countries, and be unavailable in Farsi, preventing Iranian journalists from gaining insights.
There is a tendency to overly focus on adversarial attacks from Iran, possibly due to US foreign policy interests. While investigating and nullifying Iranian government information operations is important, the methodologies behind threat discovery are sometimes unclear or reported impacts are exaggerated.
Companies often lack clear guidelines on responding to political crises, humanitarian crises, and illegitimate government demands.