Online Regulation

To follow-up on our previous blogpost on academic analysis of the state of global online regulation, we take here a future oriented approach and provide an overview of academics and experts’ suggestions and analysis of what the future of online regulation might bring. ...

In this post, we look at academic analysis of global efforts to regulate online content and speech. ...

Although regulation frameworks of terrorist and harmful content online have been passed by governments in recent years, regulation in practice remains mostly a matter of solo or self-regulation by the tech sector. That is, when companies draft and apply their own rules for moderating user-generated content on their platforms or when they voluntarily comply with ...

With a growing internet penetration rate (69%) and an increasing number of active social media users (35 million, at a growth rate of 11% between 2019 and 2020), the online space in Colombia remains governed by the principle of net neutrality. ...

Brazil represents a major market for online platforms. It is the leading country in terms of internet use in South America, and a key market for Facebook and WhatsApp. WhatsApp’s popularity and the online disinformation campaigns that have been coordinated on the platform are essential to understand Brazil’s approach to online regulation. The messenger app ...

Though aiming to remedy genuine harms, government regulation of our online lives also raises legitimate concerns over privacy and freedom of expression. We must address online harms whilst ensuring harms are not also inflicted through unfairly infringing on people’s freedoms. HOPE not hate recognises the importance of this balancing act, and encourages a form of ...

The United Kingdom has set out an ambitious online regulatory framework in its Online Harms White Paper, aiming to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online” by countering various online harms ranging from cyberbullying to terrorist content. This is yet to come into effect, but the UK has approved an ...

Morocco’s online regulatory framework consists of different laws and codes that strive to limit the spread of content than can pose a threat to the Kingdom’s “integrity, security and public order”. Central to this framework are the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law passed in the aftermath of the 2003 Casablanca bombings and the 2016 Press Code that ...

France is, alongside New Zealand, an initiator of the Christchurch Call to Action to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. Prior to the Christchurch Call, France has elevated tackling terrorist use of the internet as a key pillar of its counterterrorism policy,[1] supporting the EU proposal on Preventing the Dissemination of Terrorist Content Online, ...

Germany has an extensive framework for regulating online content, particularly with regards to hate speech and violent extremist and terrorist material. Experts also note that Germany’s regulatory framework has to some extent helped set the standard for the European, and possibly global, regulatory landscape. ...