The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South Disclosure of Community Guidelines Periodic Transparency Reporting Major dating platforms publish community guidelines to inform users what speech and behaviour is impermissible on their platforms.137 However, these are often buried inside long and incomprehensible Terms of Service documents (see Aisle). Platforms should provide these guidelines in an accessible and understandable format, with an option for users to get more detailed information through examples.138 These must be available in regional languages. The Intermediary Guidelines, 2021 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 mandate that platforms make their policies available in the preferred languages of their users (English or any language in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution).139 We found that neither Aisle nor Quack Quack provided their Community Guidelines, Codes of Conduct or Safety tips in local languages at the time of writing. It is also important that platforms disclose information on how they enforce these community guidelines to ensure user safety, including processes followed internally on receiving user complaints, the use of automated tools to flag certain categories of harmful content, and the linguistic expertise of human content moderators. Dating Platforms have been the worst offenders in terms of releasing baseline aggregate information on content moderation publicly.142 While social media platforms and even some ride-hailing platforms (in limited jurisdictions) have released aggregate transparency reports, there is no public information on the number of complaints received by dating platforms, even for serious crimes like sexual harassment and rapes.143 In February 2025, Bumble released its first-ever transparency report for the European Union144 under Digital Services Act obligations.145 Prominent dating platforms from Match Group (like Hinge, Tinder), and Bumble started sharing redacted versions of their statement of reasons for adverse action on user accounts or content with the publicly available DSA Transparency Database.146 Australia’s Code of Practice for dating services147 lays down annual transparency reporting obligations for dating platforms and the first transparency reports will be available in the coming months.148 Accessible Reporting Mechanisms for users Dating platforms must provide easily accessible reporting mechanisms for users140 who want to report harmful content or behaviour by other users they met through the platform, either on the platform or outside of it. 52 Dating platforms must provide easily accessible reporting mechanisms for users140 who want to report harmful content or behaviour by other users they met through the platform, either on the platform or outside of it. They must inform complainants of the progress in their report and the action taken. In case they decide not to act, they must provide the complainant with information on the grounds on which such a decision was taken. It is, however, unlikely that global platforms will voluntarily extend transparency reporting to other jurisdictions in the Global South, thus periodic reporting of platform’s content moderation actions disaggregated by local languages must be prescribed through legislation. Efficiency of automated tools in different contexts and languages, as well as the language proficiency, qualifications and diversity in the human moderation team, must be disclosed. It is also important that transparency reports include aggregate information on state requests for user data. It must be noted that, as per the Intermediary Guidelines, all intermediaries, including dating platforms, must “prominently publish” the name and contact details of the Grievance Officer.141 We could not locate this information on both Aisle and Quack Quack. Platform Accountability in Online Dating Platform Accountability in Online Dating While social media platforms and even some ridehailing platforms (in limited jurisdictions) have released aggregate transparency reports, there is no public information on the number of complaints received by dating platforms, even for serious crimes like sexual harassment and rapes. 53