Automated content moderation – Power, law, and the role of human decisions

The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) invites you to the closing event of Case 2 – Content Moderation as part of the project Human in the Loop? Autonomy and Automation in Socio-Technical Systems (HiLO). The event will be held in English.

Automated content moderation – Power, law, and the role of human decisions

Gallery Walk
3 November 2025 • 3:30 – 5:00 pm (CET)
Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)
Französische Str. 9, 10117 Berlin

This gallery walk marks the end of our case study on content moderation, which is part of the research project Human in the Loop? Autonomy and Automation in Socio-Technical Systems (Hilo), funded by the Mercator Foundation and carried out by the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG). The project investigates how, given the increasingly complex collaboration between humans and machines in decision-making processes, this socio-technical interplay could be arranged in a way that allows its potential advantages to be realised while reducing accompanying risks.

Content moderation presents a highly relevant example in this context: It involves detecting, evaluating, and, if necessary, removing harmful posts in compliance with platform-internal guidelines and regulatory requirements. The goal of effective content moderation and overall content governance is to maintain respectful and safe online discourse, for example, by identifying and sanctioning hate speech, explicit content, or disinformation. This moderation process is increasingly carried out in collaboration between technological systems and human moderators. (Partially) automated moderation systems detect harmful content based on predefined criteria, with processes differing dependent on specific categories of harm. However, humans often still make the final decision on the legitimacy of content. As part of our case study, we modeled the socio-technical environment and success factors of this complex interplay, analysed the advantages and disadvantages of hybrid decision-making, and, together with a group of experts, developed a “Code of Conduct” that formulates normative and ethical guidelines for the design and regulation of moderation processes.

At this stage, we would like to share our findings with you!

As part of this event, we aim to provide an interested audience with specific insights into the results of the project’s second case study. The foci will be an interview with Mophat Okinyi about the planned anthology “Inside Automation: Content Moderation, Technology, and Empowerment in the Majority World” (working title), an insight into our escape game, and key requirements from the developed Code of Conduct for Human-Machine Interaction in the Context of Content Governance (“CoC Automation”).

Speakers

Mophat Okinyi, he is founder & CEO of Techworker Community Africa. As AI and human rights activist, his primary focus lies in advocating for the fair treatment and rights of online content moderators, tech workers and data training professionals.

Agenda

Closed session

Public session

Participation

Please note that participation in the closed session (1:00–3:30pm) is only upon invite. If you would like to participate in the public session (3:30–5:00pm), please register at the bottom of this separate page.