The LISTOS Act of 2025 mandates that major online platforms ensure consistent content moderation across all languages, provide public transparency reports on staffing and algorithmic processes, and guarantee equitable access to safety tools for non-English-speaking users.
Ben Luján
Senator
NM
The **Language-Inclusive Support and Transparency for Online Services (LISTOS) Act of 2025** aims to ensure equitable safety and moderation standards across all languages on major online platforms. The bill requires covered platforms to maintain consistent enforcement of policies across different languages, provide transparent annual reports on their moderation staffing and automated processes, and ensure that reporting tools and policies are accessible in every language they support. Additionally, it establishes an FTC advisory group to develop best practices for language-sensitive technologies and grants the FTC and state attorneys general authority to enforce these requirements.
New LISTOS Act Mandates Equal Safety for Non-English Users: Tech Giants Face 2025 Transparency Deadline
The Language-Inclusive Support and Transparency for Online Services Act of 2025 (LISTOS Act) aims to close a massive loophole in digital safety: the fact that content moderation often falls off a cliff if you aren't speaking English. The bill requires platforms with over 10 million U.S. users to ensure their systems for catching illegal content or policy violations are "reasonably consistent" across all languages they make money from (Sec. 3). If a social media giant is selling ads in Spanish or Vietnamese, they can no longer treat moderation in those languages as an afterthought. It’s a direct move to stop non-English speakers from being disproportionately targeted by the scams and harassment that slip through weaker filters.
The Receipt Requirement
Under Section 4, the days of platforms saying "we're working on it" are over. Companies must submit annual transparency reports to the FTC detailing exactly how many human moderators they have, what languages those people speak, and their proficiency levels. It even gets into the weeds of the workflow, requiring platforms to disclose how much content is reviewed in its original language versus how much is run through a translation tool before a human sees it. For someone managing a local business page in a multilingual community, this means more accountability if a scammer targets their customers in a language the platform’s AI doesn't fully grasp.
Universal Tools and Clear Rules
Section 5 hits on a practical pain point for millions: the report button. The bill mandates that if a platform offers a service in a specific language, all its reporting tools and safety policies must be available in that same language with the same level of prominence. You shouldn't need a translator just to report a post that violates a site’s rules. For a parent trying to report cyberbullying on a child's account, this ensures the "Help" center isn't a dead end just because they are navigating the site in their native tongue.
The Fine Print and Enforcement
While the bill is a major step for digital equity, there are a few "wait and see" areas. Section 3 includes an exception for languages with fewer than 100,000 U.S. users, meaning smaller linguistic communities might still face gaps in protection. Additionally, the term "reasonably consistent" gives the FTC some room for interpretation, which could lead to legal sparring over what "consistent" actually looks like in practice. To keep things moving, the bill creates an Advisory Group on Language-Sensitive Technologies (Sec. 6) to help the FTC stay ahead of AI trends like Large Language Models. Enforcement isn't just a federal job either; state attorneys general are empowered to sue platforms on behalf of their residents to stop violations and seek damages (Sec. 7).