Hi everyone, Over the past 18 months, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) has been studying how content moderation systems operate across multiple regions in the Global South. Our team studied four languages: Maghrebi Arabic, Kiswahili, Tamil, and Quechua. We are excited to announce the publication of a new research report, "Content Moderation in the Global South: A Comparative Study of Four Low-Resource Languages <https://cdt.org/insights/content-moderation-in-the-global-south-a-comparative-study-of-four-low-resource-languages/>" which compares and synthesize the insights we gained from studying the four regions and includes our recommendations for improving content moderation in low-resource languages of the Global South. We invite you to join us for a public webinar on August 7th, 2025 at 9AM ET, where we will explore key themes from the study. RSVP to attend: Interrogating content moderation systems in indigenous and low-resource languages of the Global South <https://cdt.org/event/interrogating-content-moderation-systems-in-indigenous-and-low-resource-languages-of-the-global-south/>. Live interpretation will be available in English, Swahili, Arabic, and Spanish. In brief our findings suggest that: - Currently, global tech companies use two main approaches to content moderation: Global and Local. Many of these “global” policies applied uniformly across regions at scale often originate from U.S. laws and norms and can ignore unique linguistic and cultural nuances. The local approach involves tailoring policies, particularly those related to cultural matters, to specific regions. This approach, despite its promise of inclusivity, sometimes poses obstacles and limitations on users trying to challenge local norms that violate their rights. - The use of global and local approaches combined with the outsourcing of content moderation for the low-resource languages can lead to ineffective moderation and pressure on human moderators working for these companies. For example, moderators from a single country are often tasked with moderating content from across their region, despite dialectical and contextual variations. - Resistance is a common phenomenon among users in the Global South. Many users across the case studies employed various tactics to circumvent and even resist against what they saw as undue moderation. This involved changing letters in the language, using emojis, uploading random content alongside material they believed would be restricted, and avoiding certain words. In other cases, users realized that the automated tools used by the platforms did not understand their indigenous language and so they simply posted in that language to avoid moderation. - Lastly, many NLP researchers and language technology experts in the Global South have developed tools and strategies to improve moderation in many low-resource languages. However, these scholars and experts often feel underutilized or unheard by tech companies You can access the full report here <https://cdt.org/insights/content-moderation-in-the-global-south-a-comparative-study-of-four-low-resource-languages/> for detailed insights, or read threads on Bsky <https://bsky.app/profile/cdt.org/post/3ltkdrfw6c726> and LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/center-for-democracy-%26-technology_over-18-months-cdt-studied-content-moderation-activity-7348765548677095424-5XR7?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABmRVjQBbSXIuPC3_K9dGpdU_vv3AzZW62k> . Join us for our public webinar and launch event–Interrogating content moderation systems in indigenous and low-resource languages of the Global South <https://cdt.org/event/interrogating-content-moderation-systems-in-indigenous-and-low-resource-languages-of-the-global-south/> on August 7th, and in the interim we invite you to read and share this report within your networks. We also welcome your feedback. Thanks, Dhanaraj