This research paper has highlighted the challenges of achieving global platform regulation and underscored the gulf between the current technological reality of a near-global internet and the divergent national approaches to its governance.
Current responses at the national level are defined by deep cultural and political divisions, and attempts to reach international agreement on platform governance are likely to be difficult. In response to these realities, the following proposals present possible next steps for policymakers and organizations seeking to tackle national divergence, invest in international cooperation and preserve an open, global internet.
Prioritize a shared lexicon and cooperation through networks of regulatory bodies
Despite divergent national approaches, there is significant harmony in the language used by governments when approaching platform regulation, most often on questions of security, mitigating harms and protection for users. Governments must empower their respective regulatory bodies to seek international consensus on:
- Articulating clearly the values that underpin regulatory approaches and identifying consensus across emergent approaches around the world;
- Strengthening informal and formal international networks of regulators to boost information-sharing and exchange of technical expertise. (The Global Online Safety Regulators Network provides a useful starting point);
- Ensuring that regulatory bodies cooperate on the design and execution of regulation within the bounds of domestic legislation;
- Supporting technical transparency among regulators to create opportunities for joint adoption of regulatory instruments and ensure greater consistency between regulatory approaches; and
- Investing in technologies that build and enhance institutional consensus within regulatory bodies and their networks.
Build on human rights language to formulate human rights-based platform regulation
Regulatory approaches should be tested against human rights frameworks, particularly those recognized in the ICCPR and other existing international and regional human rights instruments. Content policies or standards should equally reflect the international human rights legal framework. This means that:
- States must enact sufficiently clear, accessible and transparent laws/regulations for online content governance. The same should apply to platforms’ content moderation policies. Laws, regulations and policies should carefully balance the rights of users and the general public to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds with other competing rights or interests online, such as non-discrimination, privacy and health.
- Achieving this balance will require a non-binary approach to content governance or moderation. Limitations on different types of online content should go beyond a ‘take down/leave up’ binary to include other measures, such as labelling, deprioritization and digital ‘nudges’ towards other sources of information. Review and redress mechanisms are an essential safeguard against erroneous content moderation decisions and flawed processes behind those decisions.
- Support must be given to continued development of ‘systems first’ regulatory approaches that focus on the intents, outcomes and processes employed by technology platforms, rather than on individual pieces of content or instances of user behaviour.
Support and secure the work of global internet standards bodies
Long-standing institutions for global internet governance already exist – for example, the IGF and the handful of standards bodies responsible for making technical decisions on the internet’s architecture. Stronger national sovereignty over the internet will come from working within and alongside these institutions, rather than against them – a principle currently better understood by China than by other major digital powers.
Internationally harmonized and consistent regulation is only viable when what is being regulated is consistent across borders. To this end, governments must:
- Ensure sufficient government expertise to support political decision-makers in understanding the possible technical routes to achieving policy aims;
- Work with partners to ensure existing multi-stakeholder bodies remain politically neutral, amid a growing threat of state and institutional capture.
- Invest in their capacity to participate actively in existing multi-stakeholder bodies and engage with other national communities doing the same. This includes investing in the technical expertise required;
- Encourage national participation in standards bodies through:
- Industry secondments from businesses sharing government values; and
- Philanthropic and/or government support for civil society participation;
- Demand consistent reporting and discussion within existing multilateral bodies (e.g. EU–US Trade and Technology Council, G7, G20, UN, WTO) on questions of digital trade to underscore the importance of neutrality and independence for internet standards bodies; and
- Highlight efforts by hostile nations and corporate monopolies to undermine this neutrality and independence.
Significantly increase investment in bilateral and multilateral software cooperation
Global cooperation on software and digital regulation remains limited. Alongside regulatory efforts to affect the current landscape, it is critical that governments take seriously the requirement to design and deploy what comes next. These efforts should entail:
- Embracing a modular approach to cross-border collaboration on common processes and codes of practice;
- Joint funding of sovereign technology investment where mutual societal requirements can be identified and met through a single project;
- Joint financing for independent technology funds to support the development of technologies outside of current US-centric investment models; and
- Strengthening formal and informal networks of digital collaboration across national governments to support the development of, and cooperation on, multilateral technology programming.
