One of the key challenges of regulating internet platforms is international cooperation. This chapter offers some insights into platform responsibility reforms by relying on forty years of experience in regulating cross-border financial institutions. Internet platforms and cross-border banks have much in common from a regulatory perspective. They both operate in an interconnected global market that lacks a supranational regulatory framework. And they also tend to generate cross-border spillovers that are difficult to control. Harmful content and systemic risks – the two key regulatory challenges for platforms and banks, respectively – can be conceptualized as negative externalities.

One of the main lessons learned in regulating cross-border banks is that, under certain conditions, international regulatory cooperation is possible. We have witnessed that in the successful design and implementation of the Basel Accord – the global banking standard that regulates banks’ solvency and liquidity risks. In this chapter, I will analyze the conditions under which cooperation can ensue and what the history of the Basel Accord can teach to platform responsibility reforms. In the last part, I will discuss what can be done when cooperation is more challenging.

Digital behavior does not occur in isolation within space, but is instead ever-present, vying for a user’s time against other alternative behaviors. The determinants of behavior choice are diverse, yet in behavioral sciences, this “behavioral competition” is operationalized by alterations in the value of the contingent reinforcer to latent behaviors. In this competitive environment, where the user has limited time to enact certain behaviors, they must choose by seeking a balance that maximizes their satisfaction (law of diminishing marginal utility & utility maximization model). This shifting process is known as behavioral contrast, which reflects a variation in some behavioral component due to the change in the value of reinforcers associated with any of the present behaviors. In the design of digital behaviors, understanding this process is fundamental, as it directs the designer towards potential enhancements of the digital service (through improving the reinforcers) to better its positioning against competitors.

The conditional legal immunity for hosting unlawful content (safe harbour) provided by Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) is central to the regulation of online platforms in India for two reasons. First, absent this immunity, platforms in India risk being secondarily liable for a wide range of civil and criminal offences. Second, the Indian Government has recognised that legal immunity for user-generated content is key to platform operations and has sought to regulate platform behaviour by prescribing several pre-conditions to safe harbour. This chapter examines the different obligations set out in the Intermediary Guidelines and evaluates the efforts of the Indian government to regulate platform behaviour in India through the pre-conditions for safe harbour. This chapter finds that the obligations set out in the Intermediary Guidelines are enforced in a patchwork and inconsistent manner through courts. However, the Indian Government retains powerful controls over content and platform behaviour by virtue of its power to block content under Section 69A of the IT Act and the ability to impose personal liability on platform employees within India.

Corecursive algebras are algebras that admit unique solutions of recursive equation systems. We study these and a generalization: completely iterative algebras. The terminal coalgebra turns out to be the initial corecursive algebra as well as the initial completely iterative algebra. Dually, the initial algebra is the initial (parametrically) recursive coalgebra. These results explain the title of the chapter. We apply recursive coalgebras in order to obtain a new proof of the Initial Algebra Theorem from Chapter 6.

Well-founded coalgebras generalize well-foundedness for graphs, and they capture the induction principle for well-founded orders on an abstract level. Taylor’s General Recursion Theorem shows that, under hypotheses, every well-founded coalgebra is parametrically recursive. We give a new proof of this result, and we show that it holds for all set functors, and for all endofunctors preserving monomorphisms on a complete and well-powered category with smooth monomorphisms. The converse of the theorem holds for set functors preserving inverse images. We provide an iterative construction of the well-founded part of a given coalgebra: It is carried by the least fixed point of Jacobs’ next-time operator.

This chapter presents a number of sufficient conditions to guarantee that an endofunctor has an initial algebra or a terminal coalgebra. We generalize Kawahara and Mori’s notion of a bounded set functor and prove that for a cocomplete and co-well-powered category with a terminal object, every endofunctor bounded by a generating set has a terminal coalgebra. We use this to show that every accessible endofunctor on a locally presentable category has an initial algebra and a terminal coalgebra. We introduce pre-accessible functors and prove that on a cocomplete and co-well-powered category, the initial-algebra chain of a pre-accessible functor converges, and so the initial algebra exists. If the base category is locally presentable and the functor preserves monomorphisms, then the terminal coalgebra exists.

This paper considers the goals of regulators in different countries working on regulating online platforms and how those varied motivations influence the potential for international coordination and cooperation on platform governance. different policy debates and goals surrounding online platform responsibility. The analysis identifies different policy goals related to three different types of obligations that regulators may impose on online platforms: responsibilities to target particular categories of unwanted content, responsibilities for platforms that wield particularly significant influence, and responsibilities to be transparent about platform decision-making. Reviewing the proposals that have emerged in each of these categories across different countries, the paper examines which of these three policy goals present the greatest opportunities for international coordination and agreement and which of them actually require such coordination in order to be effectively implemented. Finally, it considers what lessons can be drawn from existing policy efforts for how to foster greater coordination around areas of common interest related to online platforms.

This chapter presents initial algebras and terminal coalgebras obtained by the most common method. For the initial algebra, this is by iteration starting from the initial object through the natural numbers. For the terminal coalgebra, this is the dual: the iteration begins with the terminal object. The chapter is mainly concerned with examples drawn from sets, posets, complete partial orders, and metric spaces.

This chapter highlights connections of the book’s topics to structures used in all areas of mathematics. Cantor famously proved that no set can be mapped onto its power set. We present some analogous results for metric spaces and posets. On the category of topological spaces, we consider endofunctors built from the Vietoris endofunctor using products, coproducts, composition, and constant functors restricted for Hausdorff spaces. Every such functor has an initial algebra and a terminal coalgebra. Similar results hold for the Hausdorff functor on (complete) metric spaces. Extending a result of Freyd, we exhibit structures on the unit interval [0, 1] making it a terminal coalgebra of an endofunctor on bipointed metric spaces. The positive irrationals and other subsets of the real line are described as terminal coalgebras or corecursive algebras for some set functors, calling on results from the theory of continued fractions.

This paper summarizes the United States’ legal framework governing Internet “platforms” that publish third-party content. It highlights three key features of U.S. law: the constitutional protections for free speech and press, the statutory immunity provided by 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), and the limits on state regulation of the Internet. It also discusses US efforts to impose mandatory transparency obligations on Internet “platforms.”

Like information disseminated through online platforms, infectious diseases can cross international borders as they track the movement of people (and sometimes animals and goods) and spread globally. Hence, their control and management have major implications for international relations, and international law. Drawing on this analogy, this chapter looks to global health governance to formulate suggestions for the governance of online platforms. Successes in global health governance suggest that the principle of tackling low-hanging fruit first to build trust and momentum towards more challenging goals may extend to online platform governance. Progress beyond the low-hanging fruit appears more challenging: For one, disagreement on the issue of resource allocation in the online platform setting may lead to “outbreaks” of disinformation being relegated to regions of the world that may not be at the top of online platforms’ market priorities lists. Secondly, while there may be wide consensus on the harms of infectious disease outbreaks, the harms from the spread of disinformation are more contested. Relying on national definitions of disinformation would hardly yield coherent international cooperation. Global health governance would thus suggest that an internationally negotiated agreement on standards as it relates to disinformation may be necessary.

Discussing ethics within the highly competitive technology sector can be complex. Although companies outwardly express their commitment to ethical practices, internally, the topic is often regarded as uncomfortable due to its implications for corporate finances. In digital behavior design, ethical consideration begins with defining the various drives and reinforcers that will guide the design process. As a sub-field of Human Factors and Engineering Psychology, digital behavior design can draw from their established Codes of Ethics and Codes of Conduct. However, beyond incorporating the ethical principles that govern Human Factors and psychology, it is also imperative to acknowledge unique ethical principles that highlight the particularities of their application. In seeking these specific ethical norms, it is important to identify the essential desirable value inherent in the professional practice of digital behavior designers. Primarily, the genuine value provided by digital behavior design is utilitarian in nature; that is, it fulfills user needs through satisfaction. From this continuous satisfaction may arise a dependency on these digital services for happiness, leading to problematic online behaviors. Therefore, poor design or the unethical use of discriminative stimuli (nudges) and reinforcers can be highly hazardous for populations with certain psychosocial and neural vulnerabilities. This chapter introduces certain standards to guide ethical and responsible conduct for designers when creating digital services. It also proposes a solution in the form of an algorithm that could be implemented in digital services to detect and support compulsive behaviors.

This chapter is an indispensable part of the framework for the design of digital behaviors, as it lays the foundation upon which user behavior when engaging with digital services can be anticipated. The core principle to grasp is that the probability of a user repeating the use of a digital or virtual service is primarily linked to two variables: satiation of the drive and the emotion generated. The satiation of the drive is elucidated by the drive reduction theory, whereas the proposal of how emotion or excitement selects behavior is explained by Frederick Sheffield’s induced emotion theory. The key point here is the attainment of the reinforcer, which is the element that induces changes both in the reduction of the drive and in the induction of emotion. In relation to this, it has also been suggested to differentiate among drive, motivation, and reinforcer. Drive is an internal state of physiological or psychological origin, acting as a vector of behavior, but it does not energize the behavior per se. This drive triggers a biochemical cascade within the organism that intensifies over time, and its non-satiation progressively energizes behavior, resulting in a subjective experience defined as an emotion, which initiates goal-directed behavior. Finally, a list of different types of drives (survival, sexual, social, and meta-cognitive) has also been offered, indicating the potential needs of users when turning to a digital or virtual service.