I am a huge fan of transparency about platform content moderation. I’ve considered it a top policy priority for years, and written about it in detail (with Paddy Leerssen, who also wrote this great piece about recommendation algorithms and transparency). I sincerely believe that without it, we are unlikely to correctly diagnose current problems or arrive at wise legal solutions.

So it pains me to admit that I don’t really know what “transparency” I’m asking for. I don’t think many other people do, either. Researchers and public interest advocates around the world can agree that more transparency is better. But, aside from people with very particular areas of interest (like political advertising), almost no one has a clear wish list. What information is really important? What information is merely nice to have? What are the trade-offs involved?

That imprecision is about to become a problem, though it’s a good kind of problem to have. A moment of real political opportunity is at hand. Lawmakers in the US, Europe, and elsewhere are ready to make some form of transparency mandatory. Whatever specific legal requirements they create will have huge consequences. The data, content, or explanations they require platforms to produce will shape our future understanding of platform operations, and our ability to respond — as consumers, as advocates, or as democracies. Whatever disclosures the laws don’t require, may never happen.

It’s easy to respond to this by saying “platforms should track all the possible data, we’ll see what’s useful later!” Some version of this approach might be justified for the very biggest “gatekeeper” or “systemically important” platforms. Of course, making Facebook or Google save all that data would be somewhat ironic, given the trouble they’ve landed in by storing similar not-clearly-needed data about their users in the past. (And the more detailed data we store about particular takedowns, the likelier it is to be personally identifiable.)

For any platform, though, we should recognize that the new practices required for transparency reporting comes at a cost. That cost might include driving platforms to adopt simpler, blunter content rules in their Terms of Service. That would reduce their expenses in classifying or explaining decisions, but presumably lead to overly broad or narrow content prohibitions. It might raise the cost of adding “social features” like user comments enough that some online businesses, like retailers or news sites, just give up on them. That would reduce some forms of innovation, and eliminate useful information for Internet users. For small and midsized platforms, transparency obligations (like other expenses related to content moderation) might add yet another reason to give up on competing with today’s giants, and accept an acquisition offer from an incumbent that already has moderation and transparency tools. Highly prescriptive transparency obligations might also drive de facto standardization and homogeneity in platform rules, moderation practices, and features.

None of these costs provides a reason to give up on transparency — or even to greatly reduce our expectations. But all of them are reasons to be thoughtful about what we ask for. It would be helpful if we could better quantify these costs, or get a handle on what transparency reporting is easier and harder to do in practice.

I’ve made a (very in the weeds) list of operational questions about transparency reporting, to illustrate some issues that are likely to arise in practice. I think detailed examples like these are helpful in thinking through both which kinds of data matter most, and how much precision we need within particular categories. For example, I personally want to know with great precision how many government orders a platform received, how it responded, and whether any orders led to later judicial review. But to me it seems OK to allow some margin of error for platforms that don’t have standardized tracking and queuing tools, and that as a result might modestly mis-count TOS takedowns (either by absolute numbers or percent).

I’ll list that and some other recommendations below. But these “recommendations” are very tentative. I don’t know enough to have a really clear set of preferences yet. There are things I wish I could learn from technologists, activists, and researchers first. The venues where those conversations would ordinarily happen — and, importantly, where observers from very different backgrounds and perspectives could have compared the issues they see, and the data they most want — have been sadly reduced for the past year.

So here is my very preliminary list:

• Transparency mandates should be flexible enough to accommodate widely varying platform practices and policies. Any de facto push toward standardization should be limited to the very most essential data.
• The most important categories of data are probably the main ones listed in the DSA: number of takedowns, number of appeals, number of successful appeals. But as my list demonstrates, those all can become complicated in practice.
• It’s worth taking the time to get legal transparency mandates right. That may mean delegating exact transparency rules to regulatory agencies in some countries, or conducting studies prior to lawmaking in others.
• Once rules are set, lawmakers should be very reluctant to move the goalposts. If a platform (especially a smaller one) invests in rebuilding its content moderation tools to track certain categories of data, it should not have to overhaul those tools soon because of changed legal requirements.
• We should insist on precise data in some cases, and tolerate more imprecision in others (based on the importance of the issue, platform capacity, etc.). And we should take the time to figure out which is which.
• Numbers aren’t everything. Aggregate data in transparency reports ultimately just tell us what platforms themselves think is going on. To understand what mistakes they make, or what biases they may exhibit, independent researchers need to see the actual content involved in takedown decisions. (This in turn raises a slough of issues about storing potentially unlawful content, user privacy and data protection, and more.)

It’s time to prioritize. Researchers and civil society should assume we are operating with a limited transparency “budget,” which we must spend wisely — asking for the information we can best put to use, and factoring in the cost. We need better understanding of both research needs and platform capabilities to do this cost-benefit analysis well. I hope that the window of political opportunity does not close before we manage to do that.

On March 11, 2026, the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program (JKISP) at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law hosted constitutional scholar Masua Sagiv for a discussion, part of its Israel Insights Webinar series, titled “Who Stands for Democracy? Understanding Israel’s Constitutional Crisis.” Moderated by Amichai Magen, Director of JKISP, the conversation explored how Israel’s ongoing war, political realignment, and institutional tensions are reshaping debates over the country’s democratic future. The discussion also unfolded in real time under wartime conditions: Sagiv briefly left the session to take shelter during a missile alert before returning to continue the conversation, a moment Magen noted reflected the realities of daily life in Israel.

Sagiv argued that the key political question in Israel’s next elections may be less about individual leaders than about the coalitions that emerge afterward. While Israeli politics has shifted rightward — especially on security issues since the Second Intifada and the October 7 attacks — she emphasized that future governments could vary widely depending on whether parties align with far-right and ultra-Orthodox partners or form broader centrist coalitions. Turning to Israel’s constitutional crisis, Sagiv said that broad agreement exists across political camps that reforms are needed to clarify the balance of power among the judiciary, executive, and legislature. Yet political mistrust has repeatedly derailed compromise proposals. Ultimately, she argued, resolving the crisis will require rebuilding trust across Israel’s ideological divides and establishing clearer constitutional “rules of the game” to stabilize the country’s democratic system.

On February 25, 2026, as part of the Israel Insights webinar series hosted by the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, former Mossad counterterrorism chief Oded Ailam — now a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs — discussed the evolving dynamics of the Israel–Hamas conflict and its broader regional and global implications.

Ailam argued that Hezbollah is currently weakened financially and constrained domestically in Lebanon but may increasingly rely on overseas attacks against Israeli, American, and Jewish targets to demonstrate loyalty to Iran. He also contended that Hamas is becoming less dependent on Iran as support from Turkey and Qatar grows, forming what he described as a new axis of political, financial, and military backing. According to Ailam, Hamas is unlikely to relinquish its weapons or influence in Gaza and will instead attempt to retain control behind the scenes even under a potential technocratic governing structure, casting doubt on the viability of proposed diplomatic frameworks.

The discussion also addressed concerns about global radicalization and dormant terrorist networks in Western countries, with Ailam emphasizing the role of state-backed ideological and financial influence in spreading extremism and calling for stronger Western responses and long-term deradicalization efforts.

In a CDDRL research seminar held on February 19, 2026, Oliver Kaplan, visiting scholar at CDDRL and Associate Professor at the University of Denver, presented a collaborative project on labor market discrimination against ex-combatants in Colombia. The study explores how prevalent hiring discrimination is against ex-combatants in the formal job market and whether this bias can be reduced. To highlight the significance of this issue, Kaplan emphasized the central role employment plays in reintegration, explaining that it is not only about income and individual well-being, but also about preventing recidivism, which is critical to long-term democratic stability and the rule of law. 

As Kaplan argues, stigma can play a major role in shaping hiring outcomes, as employers may associate ex-combatants with violence, instability, or unreliability, impacting the hiring process. Hence, the research tests whether ex-combatants face an employment penalty relative to non-ex-combatants. The study also examines whether conflict victims face similar bias and whether applicants who were both ex-combatants and victims experience different outcomes, since victim status could either reinforce stigma or generate sympathy and improve hiring chances. Finally, the study aims to identify practical ways to mitigate discrimination through education and skills training beyond high school, participation in reconciliation or peacebuilding activities, and the presence of employer tax incentives.

Kaplan and colleagues implemented a field experiment, partnering with Columbia’s reintegration agency to work with eight former combatants who applied to jobs using different versions of their resumes. The key treatment was selectively including or withholding information such as reintegration status, education, training, or reconciliation experience. This allowed the researchers to see how employers respond to different signals without faking information or using false identities. Applications were submitted through major online job platforms, and employer responses, including interview invitations, requests for additional information, and job offers, were tracked through calls, messages, and emails.  

Kaplan concluded by emphasizing the potential policy implications of these findings, explaining that improving access to employment through training and employer incentives might strengthen reintegration and reduce barriers faced by ex-combatants. Ultimately, Kaplan stressed that employment is not just an economic issue, but a key component of long-term peacebuilding, as access to stable jobs reduces the likelihood that ex-combatants return to conflict and helps sustain democratic stability.

On March 5, as part of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law’s Research Seminar Series, Laia Balcells — the Christopher F. Gallagher Family Professor of Government at Georgetown University — delivered a presentation on the impact of transitional justice museums. Balcells presented a series of co-authored studies that have examined the political and social effects of transitional justice museums — institutions that commemorate victims of past violence and shape collective memory in post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies. These museums were presented as part of broader transitional justice efforts, alongside trials, truth commissions, and reparations, all of which aim to address historical injustices and strengthen democratic values. The central question of the research project is whether these museums actually influence visitors’ political attitudes and beliefs, and under what conditions such influence occurs.

Transitional justice museums have become increasingly common around the world, particularly since World War II, as societies have attempted to confront legacies of violence and authoritarian rule. Despite their growing prevalence, their societal impact has remained contested. Some scholars have argued that museums encourage empathy, tolerance, and greater awareness of human rights. Others have warned that they may generate political polarization, especially when the historical narratives they present challenge existing identities or ideological commitments. The presentation, therefore, emphasized the need for systematic evidence to determine when museums persuade audiences and when they instead reinforce existing divisions.

To investigate this question, the research presented by Balcells relied on multiple field experiments conducted in museums across different political contexts. The first case study (co-authored with Valeria Palanza and Elsa Voytas) examined the Museo de la Memoria y de los Derechos Humanos in Santiago, Chile, which commemorates victims of the Pinochet dictatorship. Participants were randomly assigned either to visit the museum or to a control group, and their attitudes were measured before and after the visit. The results suggested that visiting the museum significantly influenced visitors’ emotions and political attitudes. In particular, exposure to the museum increased emotional responses, such as compassion toward victims, and affected views on transitional justice and democratic institutions. Some of these effects also persisted over time, indicating that museum experiences could have lasting attitudinal consequences.

The second case (co-authored with Elsa Voytas) focused on an exhibit on “The Troubles” at the Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland. This context differed from Chile because the conflict involved multiple groups and remained politically sensitive. The research design combined focus groups, field experiments with university students, and survey experiments with members of the general population. Although the exhibit generated strong emotional reactions among visitors, the findings showed little evidence that it significantly changed attitudes toward out-groups or transitional justice policies. Instead, political identities and sectarian divisions remained largely stable. This suggested that in deeply divided societies, emotional responses to historical narratives do not necessarily translate into meaningful changes in political attitudes.

The third case (co-authored with Francesca Parente and Ethan vanderWilden) examined the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Unlike the previous cases, the Holocaust did not directly implicate the museum’s primary audience in the same way as domestic conflicts. The research tested whether visiting the museum increased support for democratic values and reduced antisemitic attitudes. The findings showed that visits increased agreement with what Balcells and her co-authors described as “inclusive Holocaust lessons,” including stronger support for democracy, human rights, and opposition to genocide and authoritarianism. The museum also increased empathy toward Jewish people and support for Holocaust remembrance, with some effects lasting for at least one month after the visit.

Overall, the comparative analysis suggested that transitional justice museums could shape attitudes, but their effectiveness depended heavily on political and social context. Museums appeared more successful at reinforcing democratic norms and historical awareness than at transforming deeply entrenched intergroup attitudes. The presentation concluded by highlighting what Balcells referred to as the “Transitional Justice Museum Paradox”: societies that most need such institutions to promote reconciliation may also be the places where the likelihood of establishing such museums is lower, and where, if they are built, their impact is most limited.