The Art of Balancing User Expression and Reporter Rights
Somewhere, right now, someone is reading a stranger’s words online and is unable to scroll past. Upset by what they’ve seen, they report the content, hoping the Trust and Safety (T&S) folks will swiftly remove it.
Sometimes the content is so plainly in violation of the platform’s terms, so manifestly criminal, that the T&S gavel barely raises before the content is removed. Online harms take as many forms as there are users to invent them, and so content takedown can give victims an immediate remedy from a user’s behavior. These cases don’t require a balancing act—they barely require a scale.
Sometimes, though, reporters abuse reporting channels. In extreme cases, they target content that is clearly journalistic, educational, artistic, critical, opinionated, or a parody. The censorship attempt may be so obvious that the T&S gavel never leaves the table.
Most reports fall somewhere between the two extremes, and this is where our balancing act takes place. Free expression, debate, and criticism naturally attract audiences of all types. Critics and admirers view the content through the same window, but they enter the house for very different reasons. When a report isn’t clearly a censorship attempt, or the content is manifestly harmful, Trust and Safety folks have to carefully balance the reporter’s rights and claims with the users’ freedom to express themselves on the platform. No matter the ruling, one party will be convinced the decision was wrong. For example, Tumblr received 7,515 moderation appeals from European Union (EU) users in this period.
Every takedown request we honor is an example of a private power (the platform) restricting users’ freedom to express themselves on the platform (via their content). When content is manifestly harmful, the restriction justifies itself. For everything else, the analysis, with the exception of a handful of laws, once depended on the tolerance level for expression of those who ran the platform. If a platform’s moderation felt too restrictive, the audience could move to another platform.
In the last decade, the edifice changed dramatically. While the content creator’s wing of the house remains largely undisturbed, the reporter’s wing has been fully renovated and equipped with multiple new entrances. This renovation came courtesy of an ongoing global race among governments to write laws around content reporting. Many laws, like the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), Brazil’s Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent (DCA), and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), create mechanisms people can use to report content they find objectionable. Whether you see this as progress likely depends on your government.
Not all reporters are the same, and not all reports are the same
When we refer to reporters, we use the word in its widest sense: government agencies, victims of online abuse, and literally anyone anywhere in the world. The same conduit must serve them all, and some users treat it accordingly. For example, our transparency report says that most of our trademark complaints are from brand owners who target user criticism. We reject those, which is part of why only 7% of all-time trademark notices for WordPress.com and 3% for Tumblr led to removal of some or all of the content.
Some reporters carry greater power than others, and government agencies hold the most. Many governments can cut off a platform’s access to their citizens. So, when the government is the reporter, we have to balance user expression with citizen access to the platform. Government power affects both. In the past few years, more and more governments have been reporting content. Between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2026, government agencies targeted 17,398 Tumblr sites. On WordPress.com a total of 7,025 sites have been targeted by government reports.
In some cases, the content was so clearly harmful that the request was honored immediately upon review. Other times, reports raised very real concerns about political censorship. For example, the Russian government, in recent years, has increasingly targeted content with LGBTQI+ representation. The content under target is often celebratory, empowering, and obviously posted in good faith.
Usually, when a government agency backs us into a corner, we reach for a geoblock—the lightest tool we have to balance the interests involved. A geoblock makes content unviewable in one country but leaves it untouched everywhere else. This preserves platform access for the wider user base in that country, while minimizing the impact on user expression. To date, we’ve geoblocked 1,509 WordPress.com sites in response to government demands. You can see every site touched by censorship by expanding the “sites blocked (Country name)” sections at the bottom of this page (provided the page isn’t geoblocked for you).
Every balance, though, has a limit. This limit exists when any attempt to balance the parties’ interests leads to the erasure of a community on the platform. The Russian government blocked all of Tumblr’s media across Russia shortly after we did not comply with their demand to remove LGBTQI+ media. Despite the block, we maintain our position: If the Russian government blocks Tumblr media in an attempt to erase LGBTQI+ imagery, we must ensure it cannot be erased. When a government demand targets someone’s right to exist, rather than harmful content, the overreach is so plainly immoral and unethical that we will refuse, regardless of the consequences.
Anyone, anywhere in the world
Since the DSA came into force, reporters in the EU have a specific reporting form to notify us of content they believe is illegal under any law, anywhere in the EU. We’re legally obliged to assess and respond to the reporter in a relatively short amount of time; Tumblr’s median response time this period was 16 hours. Yet, these reports can cite one (or many) laws from the thousands and thousands of acts across EU Member States.
So, how’s that going? In the first half of 2026, WordPress.com received 123 of these notices. Exactly one out of 123 notices resulted in action against content solely because it appeared illegal in that country and didn’t violate our terms of service. Interestingly, on WordPress.com, the most commonly cited laws sent via the DSA reporting mechanism this period related to defamation. Defamation is a particularly challenging type of illegality to assess. Most other abuse types claimed via this reporting mechanism can be assessed by viewing the content. Defamation, on the other hand, is a type of claim who’s truth often lives outside the content. The content author’s statements usually stem from real-world experiences platforms aren’t privy to.
In countries that have relatively strict speech laws, such as Germany, a wrong assessment can be expensive. Take, for example, a post from the #MeToo movement. An abuser could argue a post contained damaging factual claims, and therefore amounts to defamation. Yet, the accusations against these abusers were made public precisely because private routes had failed the victims so many times.
The transparency of the #MeToo movement unmasked a deeply broken system. Unfortunately, this is the type of content where reporters could cite defamation laws to try and have claims taken down. Imagine that during the #MeToo era, a post alleged a German resident committed sexual assault, and the resident hired a lawyer to write a strongly worded letter in legalese claiming it the content is defamation.
When that report hits the queues T&S teams are left to review the content, German defamation laws, and the lawyer’s letter, but have no way to objectively verify any event that took place in private. Platforms don’t have the evidence, resources, or time that courts have when someone is on trial.
Regardless, once we receive the report, the DSA demands that we become judge and jury. If the platform finds in favor of the user and keeps the content up, it risks getting pulled into a long (and costly) lawsuit with the reporter. While this scenario is hypothetical, the broad layer of liability introduced by the DSA raises the question: Can whistleblower movements survive jurisdictions with conservative speech laws? Have movements already been suppressed?
What we can’t tell you and why
There’s a version of this blog post we can’t write. It names names and shows real cases that have pulled our balancing act in complicated directions. It’s worth being transparent about why we can’t write this version: Privacy is a right all parties have and underpins the balance. Privacy matters because it safeguards victims’ identities and protects due process where appropriate.
So, while we can’t share specific details about the reports we receive, we hope the data in this Transparency Report gives you a better sense of how complicated the balancing act can be. As shown above, the most prolific and oppressive complaints can come from governments. A fair assessment on defamation, which made up 31% of the total DSA illegal content reports on WordPress.com this period, requires knowing facts about events we usually cannot see. Many of these laws intend to protect personal dignity, but if dignity always wins expression may starve. If expression always wins, dignity may cease to exist. Balancing dignity, expression, privacy, and proportionality remains an elusive objective.
Before you close this tab, try the T&S seat for yourself. Ask yourself the question we ask ourselves every day: How would you strike a balance? Our reporting channels are always open: WordPress.com | Tumblr.
The full transparency report is available here.
Automattic Transparency Reports 
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