The Online Harms White Paper: comparing the UK and German approaches to regulation

Theil, Stefan

doi:10.1080/17577632.2019.1666476

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…An English version of the final version passed in 2017 is available at: https://perma.cc/E3WA-B2SR2 For more supportive accounts from a German perspective published in English, seeWischmeyer (2018), Theil (2019.…”

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confidence: 99%

Elections, institutions, and the regulatory politics of platform governance: The case of the German NetzDG

Gorwa

2021

Telecommunications Policy

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Policy proposals for higher rules and standards governing how major usergenerated content platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube moderate socially problematic content have become increasingly prevalent since the negotiation of the German Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) in 2017. Although a growing body of scholarship has emerged to assess the normative and legal dimensions of these regulatory developments in Germany and beyond, the legal scholarship on intermediary liability leaves key questions about why and how these policies are developed, shaped, and adopted unanswered. The goal of this article is thus to provide a deep case study into the NetzDG from a regulatory politics perspective, highlighting the importance of political and regulatory factors currently under-explored in the burgeoning interdisciplinary literatures on platform governance and platform regulation. The empirical account presented here, which draws on 30 interviews with stakeholders involved in the debate around the NetzDG's adoption, as well as hundreds of pages of deliberative documents obtained via freedom of information access requests, outlines how the NetzDG took shape, and how it overcame various significant obstacles (ranging from resistance from other stakeholders and the European Union's frameworks against regulatory fragmentation) to eventually become law. The article argues, throughout this case study, that both domestic politics and transnational institutional constraints are crucial policy factors that should receive more attention as an important part of platform regulation debates.

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confidence: 99%

Elections, institutions, and the regulatory politics of platform governance: The case of the German NetzDG

Gorwa

2021

Telecommunications Policy

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“…On the other hand, however, it is a massive task for Ofcom to regulate such a large number of platforms, particularly given the diversity and complexity of the platforms, as seen in chapter 2. A similar argument can be made for the number of harms that fall under the scope of the proposed framework (Theil, 2019). This is also an enormous and complex undertaking for a regulator, particularly an existing regulator with other responsibilities as well.…”

Section: Discussion Of the White Papermentioning

confidence: 81%

“…However, the number of registered users a platform has does not necessarily correlate with the amount of terrorist or extremist content on the site, particularly given the pressure the major platforms have received in recent years to counter this and the finding that many groups utilise small and micro-platforms (Tech Against Terrorism, 2019a). Theil (2019) argues that one upside to the "2 million users" rule is that it might protect smaller/newer platforms from being pushed out of the market place if they do not have the resources to comply with the Act. However, one could argue that 2 million users is perhaps too large to ensure that it captures the smaller platforms that terrorist groups are exploiting.…”

Section: Discussion Of the Actmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are concerns that this may cause tech platforms to err on the side of caution with removals (Article 19,). Users may also experience confusion around what is and is not harmful and there may be coordinated abuse of this vulnerability with users intentionally targeting and reporting speech because they do not agree with it (Theil, 2019).…”

Section: Discussion Of the White Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent years have therefore seen a range of regulatory actions proposed or implemented by governments across the globe and the European Commission. Many of these frameworks, however, have generated significant concern and criticism, including the effect on free speech and creating unfair burdens on certain platforms that could reduce market competitiveness (März, 2018;Schmitz and Berndt, 2018;Splittgerber and Detmering, 2017;Article 19, 2017;Echikson and Knodt, 2018;Theil, 2019;Tech Against Terrorism, 2020d;Broughton and Jaques, 2019;Bishop, Looney, Macdonald, Pearson, and Whittaker, 2019;Bogle, 2019;Oboler, 2019;Schmitz and Berndt, 2018;Alkiviadou, 2019). As a result, this thesis identified the need for a new regulatory framework that addresses the criticisms of existing regulation and is informed by past regulatory experience and research evidence of both this and other regulatory contexts.…”

Section: Context and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Regulating terrorist content on tech platforms: A proposed framework based on social regulation

Watkin¹

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Scholars have been arguing for years that responses to terrorist content on tech platforms have, to-date, been inadequate. Past responses have been reactive and fragmented with tech platforms self-regulating. Over the last few years, many governments began to decide that the self-regulatory approach was not working. As a result, a number of regulatory frameworks have been proposed and/or implemented. However, they have been highly criticised. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a new regulatory framework to counter terrorist content on tech platforms and overcome many of these criticisms. Scholars have argued that it is vital that future regulation be informed by past experience and supported by evidence from prior research. Therefore, a number of steps were taken. First, this thesis examines a review of literature into what platforms are exploited by terrorist organisations. Next, a content analysis was undertaken on blogposts that tech platforms publish in order to investigate the efforts that tech platforms report making to counter terrorist content on their services and the challenges that they face. Third, a sample of existing or currently proposed regulatory frameworks were examined in order to learn what was done well and what gaps, limitations and challenges exist that require addressing in future regulation. Finally, social regulation theory was identified as applicable in this regulatory context. Social regulation strategies were examined in three other regulatory contexts in order to examine whether they could be used in this regulatory context. The findings from the above analyses were used to inform a new regulatory framework that is proposed in this thesis. In addition to proposing a new regulatory framework, this thesis also identified three compliance issues that tech platforms may face. These compliance issues are addressed alongside the proposal of the framework. Overall, it is argued that previous regulatory attempts failed to consider the diverse array of challenges that are faced by different platforms when countering terrorist content. The regulatory framework proposed in this thesis researched these challenges and identified strategies from a social regulation approach, learning lessons from how they were applied elsewhere to overcome some of the key criticisms and limitations of existing regulatory practice.

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Countering online terrorist content: A social regulation approach

Watkin

2023

Policy & Internet

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After a period of self‐regulation, countries around the world began to implement regulations for the removal of terrorist content from tech platforms. However, much of this regulation has been criticised for a variety of reasons, most prominently for concerns of infringing free speech and creating unfair burdens for smaller platforms. In addition to this, regulation is heavily centred around content moderation, however, fails to consider or address the psychosocial risks it poses to human content moderators. This paper argues that where regulation has been heavily criticised yet continues to inspire similar regulation a new regulatory approach is required. The aim of this paper is to undertake an introductory examination of the use of a social regulation approach in three other industries (environmental protection, consumer protection and occupational health and safety) to learn and investigate new regulatory avenues that could be applied to the development of new regulation that seeks to counter terrorist content on tech platforms and is concerned with the safety of content moderators.

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The Online Harms White Paper: comparing the UK and German approaches to regulation

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Elections, institutions, and the regulatory politics of platform governance: The case of the German NetzDG

Elections, institutions, and the regulatory politics of platform governance: The case of the German NetzDG

Regulating terrorist content on tech platforms: A proposed framework based on social regulation

Countering online terrorist content: A social regulation approach

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