Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2022
This article examines the reasons for different constitutional approaches to platform governance across the Atlantic. By adopting a comparative perspective under the lens of digital constitutionalism, it analyses the move from converging to diverging strategies of the United States and the European Union to address platform governance. From a liberal approach inspired by the US framework at the end of the last century, the European Union has moved towards a constitutional democratic strategy as demonstrated, for instance, by the launch of the Digital Services Act. On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States has reacted to the consolidation of platform governance by maintaining a liberal approach based on a vertical paradigm driven by the First Amendment. Given these democratic and liberal approaches, this article explains how the different constitutional premises of the United States and the European Union have produced diverging responses to the power of online platforms, thus underlining different expressions of digital constitutionalism across the Atlantic. The first section of the article introduces the rise of digital constitutionalism as the primary research angle to study the trans-Atlantic approaches to platform governance. The second section compares the European and US responses to the rise of platform powers. The third section focuses on the implications of these different constitutional strategies on a global scale.
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176 Ibid.
177 Ibid.
178 Ibid.
179 Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council Laying Down Harmonised Rules on Artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act) and Amending Certain Union Legislative Acts COM(2021) 206 final.
180 Greenleaf, Graham, ‘Global Data Privacy Laws 2019: 132 National Laws & Many Bills’ (2019) 157 Privacy Laws & Business International Report 14 Google Scholar.
181 Address of the UN Secretary-General to the Italian Senate (18 Dec. 2019), available at: < https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/sgsm19916.doc.htm >.
182 Oreste Pollicino, ‘Contact Tracing and COVID-19: Commission and Member States Agree on Specifications’, EU Law Live (16 Jun 2020), available at: <https://eulawlive.com/contact-tracing-and-covid-19-commission-and-member-states-agree-on-specifications>.
183 GDPR (n 16), Article 3(2).
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191 Case C-18/18, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek v Facebook (2019).
