18 May 2023
From Contract Law to Online Speech Governance
For years, contract law has been a hidden protagonist in the in the discourse on platform governance. he sound of this silence is especially salient against the backdrop of recent European case law that uses the contractual toolbox to infuse social media terms of service with fundamental rights, in particular the freedom of expression. In this way, contract law has produced – somewhat counterintuitively – one of the most telling responses to the key constitutional issue of social media: how to reconcile freedom of expression as a public value with the private nature of social media platforms. Continue reading >>
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18 May 2023
The Magic Bullet That Isn’t!
Article 17 of the European Union's Copyright Directive fails to effectively safeguard copyright exceptions, which can gravely undermine users’ freedom of expression in the digital public sphere. Against this backdrop, the enactment of Article 14 of the Digital Services Act offered fresh hope. Could it be the eagerly awaited ‘magic bullet’ that ensures effective protection of user rights to rely copyright exceptions to parody and quotation on social media platforms? The possibility of such an outcome is doubtful. Continue reading >>
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17 May 2023
Personalized Law and Social Media
Personalization — a paradigm that has been widely and successfully embraced in other areas of human activity, and primarily on social media — may be ready for the law. Social media as a data source to support personalized law is only suitable for a few areas if life. In those areas, however, personalized standards bear enormous potential. Continue reading >>
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17 May 2023
The Invisible Contract
Many users do not realize that by creating a social media account, they are entering into a legally binding agreement with the platform. It might thus be time to radically rethink the principle of contractual informality online. Social media contracts may regain their importance, and users might become more aware of the contractual implications of clicking on the ‘I Agree’ button. Continue reading >>
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17 May 2023
Social Media Contracts – The Quest for Fairness and the Need for Reform
The social media landscape is changing. The ‚public forum‘ is now filled with citizens selling products, promoting services, charging for subscriptions, and sometimes seeking attention in ways which may not be socially desirable. We ask: How can a space that is becoming increasingly commercialised, monetised, and is a source of income for many nevertheless be fair? Continue reading >>
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13 February 2023
The platform-media relationship in the European Media Freedom Act
The European Media Freedom Act proposal takes aim at very large online platforms’ gatekeeping power over access to media content and aims to reshape the relationship between media and platforms. By providing media organisations a special position on platforms, however, the EMFA risks changing the media’s role and relationships with other actors in ways that run counter to its overall objective to secure media freedom. Continue reading >>
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19 December 2020