Since 2018, twelve major companies—including Apple, Facebook (Meta), Google, Reddit, Twitter, and Github—have endorsed the Santa Clara Principles and the overall number of companies providing transparency and procedural safeguards has increased, as has the level of transparency and procedural safeguards provided by many of the largest companies.

At the same time, the importance of the role these companies play in society continues to increase, resulting in an ever greater responsibility to provide sufficient levels of transparency around the decisions they make, in order to enable accountability.

This second iteration of the Santa Clara Principles is divided into Foundational and Operational Principles. Foundational Principles are overarching and cross-cutting principles that should be taken into account by all companies, of whatever business model, age, and size, when engaging in content moderation. They set out each principle and guidance as to how to implement that principle. The Operational Principles set out more granular expectations for the largest or most mature companies with respect to specific stages and aspects of the content moderation process...

This second iteration of the Santa Clara Principles expands the scope of where transparency is required with respect to what is considered “content” and “action” taken by a company...

This second iteration of the Santa Clara Principles has been developed to support companies to comply with their responsibilities to respect human rights and enhance their accountability, and to assist human rights advocates in their work. They are not designed to provide a template for regulation...