Following a host of high-profile scandals, the political influence of platform companies (the global corporations that that operate online ‘platforms’ such as Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and many ...

What is platform governance

Transnational Private Regulation (TPR) constitutes a new body of rules, practices and processes, created primarily by private actors, firms, NGOs, independent experts like technical standard-setters and epistemic communities, either exercising autonomous regulatory power or implementing delegated power, conferred by international law or by national legislation. Its recent growth reflects (A) a reallocation of regulatory power from the domestic to the global sphere and (B) a redistribution between public and private regulators. When in place, TPR produces strong distributive effects both among private actors and between them and nation states. It differs both from global public regulation and from conventional forms of private rule-making identifiable with the law merchant. The main differences concern both actors and effects. TPR is generally voluntary, mirroring domestic private regulation. Parties who wish to join the regulatory bodies participating to the regime are free to do so, however once they are in, they are legally bound and violation of the rules is subject to legal sanctions.* This freedom can be partially limited when the participation in a private regime and compliance with its standards is the condition to access to other regimes which provide market opportunities for the regulated entities. Often, subscription to a regime or compliance with a set of standards condition the access to the market or the ability to compete thereby reducing the freedom to choose. Voluntariness can be undermined by public intervention changing the regime from voluntary to compulsory. Less frequent than those observed at the domestic level are the examples of delegated private regulation to be found at the transnational level, where an explicit act of delegation by an IO or an IGO empowers a private body with regulatory power and makes the regime mandatory for the regulated entities. More diffused are the examples of ex post judicially recognised private regulation, when domestic courts recognise privately produced standards as part of customary public or private (international) law making it binding. The paper will address the factors driving towards the emergence of new TPR are identified in comparison with, on the one hand, lex mercatoria and, on the other hand, international public regimes. The focus will be then on the private sphere, looking at both the different conflicts of interests arising in the regulatory relationships and the need for governance responses; and then institutional complementarity between public and private regimes will be examined. In light of this approach, the claim that differences between public and private at the global level exist is substantiated. The publicprivate divide is analysed, comparing the domestic and the transnational level. Four different models of interaction are identified: hybridisation, collaborative law-making, coordination and competition.

http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/rdp/n26/n26a06.pdf

New foundations of transnational private regulation

Media governance has been attracting growing interest among communication scholars. However, there is uncertainty as to what exactly governance is. This article aims at clarification. One definition of media governance is developed that captures the entirety of rules that aim to organize media systems. However, media governance is characterized as a new concept suited for the analysis of media policy and regulation. This concept is argued to be not only of heuristic value by offering an integrated view on rules in the media sector but also adaptive to various theoretical approaches. In particular, the article shows the merits of connecting media governance to new sociological institutionalism and concludes by emphasizing the potential of a theoretically grounded concept of media governance.

Media Governance: A New Concept for the Analysis of Media Policy and Regulation

European self-regulation to ensure children's safety on social networking sites requires that providers ensure children are old enough to use the sites, aware of safety messages, empowered by privacy settings, discouraged from disclosing personal information, and supported by easy to use reporting mechanisms. This article assesses the regulatory framework with findings from a survey of over 25000 9- to 16-year-olds from 25 European countries. These reveal many underage children users, and many who lack the digital skills to use social networking sites safely. Despite concerns that children defy parental mediation, many comply with parental rules regarding social networking. The implications of the findings are related to policy decisions on lower age limits and self-regulation of social networking sites.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jcc4.12012

Risky Social Networking Practices Among “Underage” Users: Lessons for Evidence-Based Policy

Chris Marsden argues for a 'Middle Way' on net neutrality, a problem of consumer and media policy without easy answers that cannot be left to self-regulated market actors. His holistic solution considers ISPs' roles in the round, including their ‘Three Wise Monkeys’ legal liabilities for content filtering. Co-regulation is an awkward compromise between state and private regulation, with constitutionally uncertain protection for end-users and the appearance of a solution with only partial remedy against private censorship.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1533428_code220925.pdf?abstractid=1533428&rulid=56075&mirid=4

Net Neutrality: Towards a Co-Regulatory Solution

Can the Internet regulate itself? Faced with a range of 'harms' and conflicts associated with the new media – from gambling to pornography – many governments have resisted the temptation to regulate, opting instead to encourage media providers to develop codes of conduct and technical measures to regulate themselves. Codifying Cyberspace looks at media self-regulation in practice, in a variety of countries. It also examines the problems of balancing private censorship against fundamental rights to freedom of expression and privacy for media users. This book is the first full-scale study of self-regulation and codes of conduct in these fast-moving new media sectors and is the result of a three-year Oxford University study funded by the European Commission.

Codifying Cyberspace: Communications Self-Regulation in the Age of Internet Convergence

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Danilo Leonardi

Papers

Codifying Cyberspace: Communications Self-Regulation in the Age of Internet Convergence

The privatisation of censorship?: self regulation and freedom of expression