Freedom House Controls and Human Rights Initiative. Announced in 2021 by the United States, Australia, Denmark, and Norway, and supported by several other governments, the initiative aims to create consensus and multilateral action on export controls and other means of limiting technology that enables human rights abuses, including transnational repression.139 Though at this point it is merely a statement of intent, the initiative’s features—its multilateral mission, its plan to consult with academia and civil society, and its focus on human rights rather than a specific technology—have the potential to help governments develop policy in a way that better meets the needs of targeted groups. Social media and messaging platforms Transnational repression on social media takes many forms: harassment, explicit death threats, smear campaigns, malicious complaints to platforms about accounts and posts, and opensource surveillance. These tactics are difficult to disentangle from the broader problem of harassment online, which goes well beyond transnational repression. People at risk of transnational repression may face parallel harassment or smears from regime supporters acting on their own. However, states use these tactics in a targeted way, and they can signal a more intense effort at repression that includes offline violence. At least 23 governments supplement their physical crossborder attacks by threatening exiles on online platforms. The sophisticated, diverse, and ever-changing nature of transnational repression online means that it often falls outside the purview of governments and into the gray areas surrounding platforms’ existing policies on issues including content moderation, harassment, account security, and influence operations. Gaps in reporting and documentation that affect targeted groups are an immediate concern. Alternative solutions for managing, reporting, and documenting transnational repression online are urgently needed. Problems with reporting content to platforms Reporting harmful content is the most straightforward response to transnational repression on social media. It alerts platforms to abuse, creates a record of the problem, and can result in remedies like removal of the offending post or account suspension. However, current options for reporting are not sufficient to combat transnational repression on platforms. Many instances of transnational repression online involve forms of speech that do not violate platforms’ content policies. Interviewees expressed frustration that reporting incidents of intimidation, harassment, and smear campaigns do not result in corrective action by platforms. “A lot of the stuff I report most of the time, and they just ignore it, or they would say, well, it didn’t violate … our terms of service,” said one interviewee, adding, “Where it’s clearly mentioning certain words that are related to like murdering or something … they would remove that. But other threats of intimidation … character assassination, all these things, they just ignore it, and they will not take any action.”140 Perpetrators of online harassment may also be adapting to social media companies’ policies. An executive at one company cited anecdotal evidence of a shift from direct threats that violate content policies—and would be subject to removal—to more generalized abuse, or speech that is permissible but nevertheless harmful to the target. At least 23 governments supplement their physical cross-border attacks by threatening exiles on online platforms. Discouraged by the lack of response and overwhelmed by the volume of harmful posts they encounter, many interviewees do not report abuse at all. Sardar Pashaei, an activist from Iran, expressed his doubt that reporting is worth his time, since he knows there will be more attacks: “Anytime I can take a screenshot of those daily threats or death threats. But I really don’t know what they are going to do about it, because it’s a lot of fake accounts. Are they going to close those accounts? They’re just going to come back.”141 Separately, Gatebuke raised language barriers as an obstacle to reporting. “A lot of it actually happens in Kinyarwanda,” he told Freedom House, describing harassment he receives on Facebook. “They [Facebook] basically say, ‘This doesn’t look like a violation,’ and it just goes on.” Facebook hired Kinyarwanda content moderators in 2021, which may help people like Gatebuke in the future, but it is also a reminder that the utility of reporting is at least partially tied to internal priorities and resourcing at private companies.142 freedomhouse.org 31