Beyond Oversight: Advancing Societal Constitutionalism in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Golia, Angelo

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3793219

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The FOB reviews moderation decisions, including the deplatforming of account holders. While some legal scholars have disputed the institutional design of this quasi-judicial body and its process of arbitration (Golia, 2020), others call it "an ambitious experiment . .…”

Section: Deplatformization As Implied Governance Of the Ecosystemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deplatformization and the governance of the platform ecosystem

Dijck

Winkel

Schäfer

2021

New Media & Society

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This article analyzes deplatformization as an implied governance strategy by major tech companies to detoxify the platform ecosystem of radical content while consolidating their power as designers, operators, and governors of that same ecosystem. Deplatformization is different from deplatforming: it entails a systemic effort to push back encroaching radical right-wing platforms to the fringes of the ecosystem by denying them the infrastructural services needed to function online. We identify several deplatformization strategies, using Gab as an example of a platform that survived its relegation and which subsequently tried to build an alternative at the edge of the mainstream ecosystem. Evaluating deplatformization in terms of governance, the question that arises is who is responsible for cleansing the ecosystem: corporations, states, civil society actors, or all three combined? Understanding the implied governance of deplatformization is imperative to assess the higher stakes in future debates concerning Internet governability.

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Section: Deplatformization As Implied Governance Of the Ecosystemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deplatformization and the governance of the platform ecosystem

Dijck

Winkel

Schäfer

2021

New Media & Society

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“…On the other hand, regulations targeting market dynamics, incentives and power structures offer promising ways to strengthen democratic accountability, which the literature around both responses tends to overlook. Many of the most-discussed policy issues around social media, such as surveillance and tendencies to promote sensationalist, extreme, divisive and/or misleading content 9 , are linked to the targeted advertising-based business model which currently dominates the industry, as well as the entrenched market power of a few large platforms, which hinders the emergence of alternative models with widespread appeal (Zuboff, 2019;Bennett et al, 2021;Golia, 2021). In failing to consider reforms which reduce the market power of surveillance-capitalist corporations and promote alternative business models and governance structures, both responses therefore limit their ability to address some of the issues which most concern the public.…”

Section: Oversightsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public and private power in social media governance: multistakeholderism, the rule of law and democratic accountability

Griffin

2023

Transnational Legal Theory

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Social media platforms trouble established ideas about the public/private divide. Due to their size, political influence, and abilities to regulate speech at scale, the largest platforms are often compared to governments. Consequently, their unaccountability to the public has prompted widespread concern. This article examines and critiques two related though distinct responses to this tension in academic and policy debates, here characterised as the multistakeholderist and rule of law responses. The multistakeholderist response aims to increase civil society's influence in platform governance through transparency, consultation and participation. The rule of law response -which is increasingly influential in Europe -extends the platform/state analogy to argue that platform governance should follow the same rule of law principles as public institutions.This article evaluates both responses' abilities to make social media platforms more democratically accountable, concluding that both are limited. Both reflect a 'tech exceptionalism' which understands social media companies as different from other companies, and therefore requiring special accountability mechanisms. The proposed solutions -subjecting platforms only to accountability from other private actors, or subjecting them to the same principles as statesoverlook the insights of legal realism and law and political economy: that corporate power is constituted by state regulation. Both responses aspire to strengthen democratic accountability without substantially changing the legal foundations for digital markets or the market structures they have produced, which is unlikely to succeed. Multistakeholderist initiatives will likely exacerbate unequal participation, since abilities to influence platforms through market pressure, public criticism and consultation are highly unequally distributed. Rule of law approaches implicitly approve vast concentrations of corporate power, provided they follow rule of law principleswhich are designed to constrain presumptively democratic states, not to ensure corporations act in the public interest.Instead, the article advocates reforms guided by an ideal of economic democracy, which emphasises democratic control over markets and aims to redistribute ownership and control of media and communications infrastructure. This suggests two areas for intervention: substantive legal constraints on corporate activities such as surveillance advertising, and reforms aiming to promote pluralism in online media by reducing market concentration and providing non-commercial or public-service digital infrastructure.

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Constitutional Reasoning There and Back Again: The Facebook Oversight Board as a Source of Transnational Constitutional Advice

Miloš

Pelić

2022

European Yearbook of Constitutional Law 2021

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Beyond Oversight: Advancing Societal Constitutionalism in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Deplatformization and the governance of the platform ecosystem

Deplatformization and the governance of the platform ecosystem

Public and private power in social media governance: multistakeholderism, the rule of law and democratic accountability

Constitutional Reasoning There and Back Again: The Facebook Oversight Board as a Source of Transnational Constitutional Advice

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