BREAKOUT SESSIONS 8
Panel 8A: Regulation
Chair: Dr Seán Looney (University of Plymouth)
Negotiating the Public-Private Division of Political Labor on Terror-Related Threats Online in the European Union (2015-2019) Marguerite Borelli (Paris-Panthéon-Assas University) Abstract: This paper relies on interviews with stakeholders (n=27) in order to analyze public-private relations between mainstream platform companies Facebook (now Meta), Google (YouTube) and Twitter (now X) and European (in particular French) authorities on terrorist uses of social media between 2015 and 2019. This period leading up to the Christchurch Call saw the emergence of a governance framework on terrorism online within the European Union, with the launch of the EU Internet Forum and IRU, and negotiations on the TCO Regulation (2021/784). In a qualitative, interpretative approach, interview material is mobilized to investigate lived experiences of this early cooperation, wherein American firms were assigned a role in European national security. The study focuses on how actors defined and negotiated their involvement, navigated power relations and pursued strategies to instore working relations without abandoning their respective preferences. It finds that despite cultural fault lines (public-private, European-American) weighing heavy on role perceptions, a certain form of technological solutionism was shared across the public-private boundary, as evidenced by enthusiasm for ‘automated’ moderation. This shared enthusiasm justified the development of what can be called state-platform diplomacy. Evaluating the Impact of the UK Online Safety Act on User-Generated Content and Freedom of Expression on Social Media Pardis M Tehrani (Sunderland University) Abstract: The Online Safety Act passed its final parliamentary debate on Tuesday, 19 September 2023. One of the key goals of the Act is to reduce harm on social media platforms. Based on the Act, social platforms are required to remove illegal content in 9 various categories, one of which is terrorist activities. While the task of defining which content should be deemed ‘terrorist’ is left to internet services, the ambiguity and lack of certain terrorism definitions is still an ongoing issue. Therefore, the ability of the Act to create uniformity on what constitutes terrorist content will be undermined. This uncertainty might lead some of the internet providers to adopt a narrow definition of terrorism while fostering other internet providers to adopt an over-regulated approach. The fear of incurring fines outweighs the protection of human rights and freedom of expression which is imposed on internet services under section 18(2) of the Act. This article aims to evaluate the role of internet services in restricting the freedom of expression based on the new Online Safety Act. This study adopts a doctrinal approach with socio-legal analysis, more specifically, with empirical research, providing a holistic approach to comprehensively evaluate the impact of the new Online Safety Act on freedom of expression concerning user-generated content on internet service. It employs the V-Dem project’s five defining elements to assess the impact of the Act on freedom of expression.
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