Social media platform regulation

20.08.2020

The moderation of online content, especially on social media platforms, is a pressing issue for consumers and citizens. Experience of the Facebook Oversight Board, a self-regulatory initiative, will affect the future not only of Facebook, but also of other regulatory initiatives relating to social media and platforms more generally (including self-regulatory^[1] and coregulatory initiatives.

Within any one platform, there may be tensions between simple commercial considerations and political/public relations imperatives. To these may be added actual legal constraints, such as already exist in Germany^[2] and are proposed in the United Kingdom,^[3] to combat online harms. A valuable overview of the situation in 12 Sub-Saharan African countries recommends (among much else) the human-rights-based approach. Potential penalties for legal infractions may sometimes be treated as a cost of doing business, rather than as serious risks that must be avoided; adverse sentences in the court of public opinion could be seen as bigger problems.

Technology itself has a big role to play. The table below illustrates new and emerging safety technologies in the U.K. “safety tech” sector. Facebook and other online platforms are already using similar technologies for identifying and handling questionable content. Clearly many developments can be expected in coming years.

Heading and description	Harm	Approach		Benefit	Technologies and services
System-wide governance
Tracing, locating & removing illegal content	Terrorist content Extreme/Revenge pornography Child sexual abuse and exploitation		Detection and action against illegal content at system level	Tackling online crime, protecting citizens, preventing abuse	Hashing URL lists Takedown and domain alerts Keyword collation and monitoring
Platform governance
Platform level response to illegal content, including preventing illegal content from being published	Terrorist content. Extreme/revenge pornography Child sexual abuse and exploitation Sharing of indecent images	Encouraging or assisting suicide Harassment Hate crime	Pre-moderation, detection, flagging and removal of illegal content at platform level	Protection from illegal online content	Threat detection and reporting Platform monitoring Hashing Content filtering Automated and human moderation Image processing
Platform moderation & monitoring
Prevention, detection & action against harmful conduct and / or content	Extremist content Cyberbullying Coercive behaviour Intimidation	Violent content Toxic Content Advocacy of self-harm	Moderation and monitoring of harmful conduct and / or content	Protection from harmful online conduct and content	Computer vision Machine learning
Age oriented online safety
Age appropriate design	Age inappropriate content Unsafe spaces		Safety by design	Design and development of user-centred online environments to keep children safe	Age appropriate web services, consent management
Age assurance	Age inappropriate content Unsafe spaces		Age detection and verification	Protection from age-inappropriate content	Age assurance mechanisms: age estimation, e-IDs, database matching / attribute exchange
User protection
User initiated protection (user, parental or device-based)	Age inappropriate content Unsafe spaces		Safety by design, age-based safeguarding	Creating safe online experiences for children	Endpoint protection software and applications
Network filtering	Extremist content Cyberbullying Coercive behaviour	Intimidation Violent content Harmful instruction	Detection and blocking access to harmful or inappropriate content	Preventing access to harmful material within defined settings	Content filtering and monitoring
Information governance
Detecting and disrupting false, misleading and/or harmful narratives	Misinformation Disinformation		Fact checking, disinformation research and disruption	Ensuring citizen information accuracy and trust in the information environment and wider society	Disinformation research Site assurance AI/ML enabled automated fact-checking
Online safety professional services
Compliance & professional services	– All		Compliance services, research, frameworks and methodologies for auditing, evaluating or mitigating potential harms	Enabling the development of safer online communities and embedding safety-by-default	Advisory support with implementing technical solutions

Source: Adapted from Safer Technology, Safer Users: The UK as a World-Leader in Safety Tech.

Notes

Examples include the Global Network Initiative and the Internet Commission. These both aim to provide independent assessments of industry members’ performance, though with different emphases and approaches. Both face the challenge of reconciling a level of commercial confidentiality that will be acceptable to their members with enough transparency to achieve public credibility. ↑
The 2017 Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz is already under review. See Government wants to change the Network Enforcement Act, https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2020/kw19-de-netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz-692664. ↑
See Online harms regulation: Clarity awaited but reforms set to be delayed. ↑

Last updated on: 19.01.2022

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