Coinbase’s Philosophy on Account Removal and Content Moderation | by Coinbase | Feb, 2022

By Brian Armstrong

In the previous couple of years, it’s turn out to be more and more widespread for tech corporations to censor clients or shut their accounts for a variety of causes (e.g., misinformation). Fortunately, as a crypto enterprise we don’t face this difficulty as continuously as a social community does, however we nonetheless must set clear insurance policies round acceptable use of our merchandise. As our product suite grows, it can even embody merchandise that host consumer generated content material like NFTs.

Our excessive stage philosophy is that, in a democratic society, the folks and their elected officers ought to determine what habits is allowed and never allowed by setting legal guidelines. We predict it units a harmful precedent when tech corporations, similar to Coinbase, or their executives begin making judgment calls on troublesome societal points, appearing as decide and jury. This strategy sounds easy in concept, however in apply it’s something however.

First, it may be very complicated to find out whether or not an exercise is authorized or unlawful. Legal guidelines fluctuate enormously throughout totally different international locations, states, and areas. Some actions are authorized solely when you’ve got a license. Some exercise is in a grey space. Some unjust legal guidelines go unenforced. Like most corporations, we refer suspected criminality to the related authorities, however we will’t count on to obtain a well timed response or opinion again from them given the numerous calls for on their sources. Sadly, this places us, together with most corporations, within the unlucky place of getting to make our personal determinations about what exercise is authorized or unlawful.

Second, even when some exercise is authorized, it could be one thing that’s deeply troubling to have on the platform. The world is suffering from polarizing, uncomfortable, or obscene content material which will nonetheless be authorized. That is the place corporations begin to train much more judgment on what they permit. However there’s nice hazard of falling down a slippery slope, having to render selections on each troublesome societal difficulty, the place you’re positive to upset somebody irrespective of the place you land. With out some robust principled primarily based strategy, these selections turn out to be arbitrary and capricious, opening the corporate to assault.

Lastly, each firm works with different corporations which have their very own set of moderation and deplatforming insurance policies. As an example, for any app to be listed within the Apple and Google App Shops, it must play by the principles of these two corporations. Within the monetary companies world, we additionally work with banks and fee processors who’ve their very own acceptable use insurance policies. Only a few corporations are fully vertically built-in, with the posh of creating their very own selections in a vacuum.

So how ought to an organization implement an affordable strategy primarily based on the above constraints? We’ve provide you with our personal reply, and I need to share it right here so our clients can perceive it, and in case it helps different corporations.

First, it’s essential to distinguish our strategy primarily based on the kind of product. Coinbase has a broad product suite, however for moderation functions we group our merchandise as both infrastructure merchandise or public-facing merchandise when excited about the right way to reasonable them. Infrastructure merchandise allow entry to fundamental monetary companies and are usually used privately by a single buyer, whereas public-facing merchandise usually host consumer generated content material and have social options seen to giant numbers of customers. Ben Thompson’s article on moderation in infrastructure illustrates how corporations usually take a distinct strategy for every of those merchandise.

For our infrastructure merchandise, we use rule of regulation as the muse of our strategy, as a result of we consider that governments, not corporations, ought to be deciding what’s allowed in society. We additionally consider that everybody deserves entry to monetary companies, and a check of legality ought to be enough for these merchandise.

For our public-facing merchandise, we once more begin with rule of regulation as the muse. However assuming one thing is authorized in a sure jurisdiction, we additionally transcend this and reasonable content material that’s not protected speech beneath the First Modification. We’re not legally held to the First Modification as an organization, and the First Modification is a U.S. targeted idea solely, however we’ve chosen to make use of it because the tenet of our content material moderation strategy as a result of it’s in step with our values and helps guarantee we don’t fall down a slippery slope over time. The First Modification has a whole lot of years of case regulation constructed up, and supplies an affordable framework to reasonable content material similar to incitement, preventing phrases, libel, fraud, defamation and many others. David Sacks does an awesome job describing this strategy on this weblog submit.

Lastly, there are instances the place we need to work with exterior companions, such because the App Shops, and must observe their moderation insurance policies to take action. Generally third social gathering fee suppliers have their very own insurance policies. For fee suppliers, we will merely disable performance associated to that accomplice if there’s a downside with a particular consumer, whereas persevering with to supply Coinbase companies. However getting kicked out of the app shops wouldn’t assist anybody. So when working with companions, our strategy is to be free speech supporters, however not free speech martyrs, and to make lodging whether it is important for us to perform as a enterprise.

That is clearly a fancy difficulty, and hopefully the above strategy begins to point out a path by means of it that doesn’t devolve into arbitrary and capricious determination making. To boil down the above strategy, we ask the next questions for our public-facing merchandise:

1. Is the content material unlawful in a jurisdiction by which we function?

A. If sure, then take away in that particular jurisdiction

2. Is the content material a free speech exception beneath the First Modification?

A. If sure, then take away globally

3. Has a crucial accomplice required us to take away the content material?

A. If sure, then take away the content material or disable the performance of that accomplice for the affected consumer

If the reply to any of those 3 questions is “Sure” we’ll take some moderation motion, similar to taking down content material and in extreme instances terminating the account.