The View From DC: Online Safety Regulation

(Part Two of the Discussion Paper – The View from DC in November 2023)

Lawmakers are increasingly confident that they can regulate technology environments

The Rt Hon Michelle Donelan the UK Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology spoke at the conference. Her speech sums up the current attitude of many lawmakers around the world.

It included the statement “No longer will tech companies be able to run Wild West platforms…” articulating lawmakers views of, and frustrations with the tech industry. However, it was the definitive statement “We can and we will prevent children from seeing content that they can never unsee…” that most reflects the shifted mindset of lawmakers.  

There has been a general acceptance that complex information technology environments don’t regulate well since the late 1990’s. Efforts to exert control and force safety through regulation never seemed to stick. Instead the internet ecosystem just evolved or adjusted and effectively sidestepped those efforts.  

In the 2010’s – the prevailing view was that genuine multistakeholder solutions were the only way to address online harms. Initiatives that put tech companies, civil society and Government at the same table seemed to be making the most headway.

The emergence of clear winners of the Web 2.0 period has created an opportunity to target regulation at technology companies that control a large percentage of todays internet use. A number of regulatory moves promoted as general online safety interventions can more accurately be described as regulatory tools to control big tech.

There’s nothing wrong with that. However, it is worth noting that no online safety regulation has been in place long enough to prove it will reduce actual rates of harm. My fear when I hear lawmakers say “we can and we will” is that an increased confidence in regulation and enforcement will:

1. Force lawmakers to pump increasing resources into regulatory agencies to deliver the promised outcomes at the expense of community level interventions and multi-stakeholder efforts and  
2. Push tech companies towards compliance activity at the expense of investment in trust and safety innovation.

It is important that Governments continue to foster the development of local online safety ecosystems to ensure users online safety needs can be met no matter what they do, or where they go online. Information technology ecosystems are still complex and evolving and there are plenty of wild west platforms and technologies just a click away.

Regulation efforts in the US

US based regulation shapes the internet experience of billions of people outside of the US. For example Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996 shapes moderation activity by providing tech companies liability protection for user produced content, whilst the Childs Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is the reason social media is made available to young people around the world at the age of 13.   

That is why we keep such a close eye on regulatory efforts in the US. There are many proposed laws drafted at both state and federal levels, each receiving mixed reviews from the online safety community. Those efforts that do progress into law seem to immediately collide with insurmountable freedom of speech and privacy challenges.  

Europe has the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). There have been recent announcements from US Congress members that look promising but as yet the US does not yet have a comprehensive data privacy and protection law that can be effectively applied to the data gathered up by tech. It does seem that such a law would receive support from both the free speech and online safety communities – although some of the that support would no doubt fall away as the details were developed.

Perhaps most importantly, such a law would create a foundation upon which more online safety focused regulation could successfully be built. And although it will be written by US lawmakers for US citizens – it will impact the internet far beyond the US borders.  

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