Regulatory Evolutions

Privatisation of justice

Faced with the scale of monitoring what happens on the Internet, states tend to shift that responsibility onto services. Services put “codes of conduct” in their terms of use and claim the right, at their own discretion, to censor content or even cut off a user who breaks the rules. That power is exercised without adversarial debate or independent arbitration.

With no incentive to take risks, service publishers end up over-censoring their users’ content, restricting freedom of expression and harming democracy.

Respect for personal data

In response to abuses by some service providers, some states have adopted common-sense rules on the processing of personal data (notably the European Commission with the GDPR).

Given past practice, these rules are very demanding for existing service publishers. Penalties for non-compliance, once negligible for large groups, are now tied to turnover and thus become a real deterrent even for them.

In that context, some services may see an advantage in shedding the responsibility for storing and processing personal data.