In the digital age, the proliferation of illegal content online remains a significant public concern for which no ideal solution has yet been found. In recent years, the European Union (EU) has developed a complex legal framework that relies on social media companies to implement both EU and Member State laws in addressing the issue. This paper examines this development through the lens of regulation studies, showing how the EU is mandating social media companies to act as regulatory intermediaries. On this basis, it argues that the EU is institutionalising the content moderation processes created by these companies, effectively integrating them into the legal enforcement landscape. The paper highlights how this institutionalisation raises important questions about the tension between the self-interest of private actors and the public interest in combating illegal content online. It further underlines how, by adopting such a legal framework, the EU continues to pursue governance frameworks grounded in market-based principles. From this perspective, the paper makes two main contributions to the literature on digital law in the EU. First, at a conceptual level, it demonstrates the value of regulation studies as a lens for interpreting recent legal developments. Second, from a critical standpoint, it questions the EU’s legal framework in light of the tension between companies’ self-interest and their intermediation mandate, as well as the persistence of market-based governance approaches within the EU. The paper also contributes to the literature on regulation studies by proposing a new case study of regulatory intermediation in the digital context.

In this paper, I argue that the 2021 update to Facebook’s Community Standards on hate speech that distinguishes between “attacks on people” and “attacks against concepts and institutions” represented a shift in Meta’s content moderation policies from a consequentialist United States First Amendment influenced view of free speech to a constitutive approach that is responsive to the “real-world” harm of the virality of hate speech online in contexts such as India. To illustrate this argument, I focus on Meta’s response to “attacks against Islam and The Prophet” that are regularly used to attack Muslims by Hindu nationalists and their supporters, in India and abroad. The weaponisation of hate speech and the virality of speech-acts afforded by Facebook and other platforms by Hindu nationalists and their supporters to subordinate minorities and dissenting voices is one of the many contemporary practices that have contributed to the production of majoritarian legality in India.

This Article discusses China’s content moderation in the age of artificial intelligence. It first introduces two long-overlooked features of China’s content moderation: the medium-based model and the “No-Dispute” Policy. The former emphasizes that content moderation in China varies based on different media, while the latter argues that China’s content moderation is often content-neutral rather than being driven by ideology or having an official stance. The Article then summarizes the three main challenges artificial intelligence presents to content moderation: a shift in structure from the traditional “state v. citizen” dichotomy to the “platform–government–citizen” triangle; a transition in means from human review to algorithm-based and machine-based moderation; and stimulating a reimagination of traditional theories and doctrines of freedom of speech in terms of standards and classification. Finally, the Article takes online violence, one of the most prominent issues in contemporary Chinese content moderation, as a case study to examine specific issues in China’s content moderation in the era of artificial intelligence.

This article examines the transformative impact of large language models (LLMs) on online content moderation, revealing a critical gap between platforms’ rule-based policies and their AI-driven enforcement mechanisms. Using Facebook’s hate speech moderation policies and practices as a case study, we identify a paradox: while content policies are increasingly rule-oriented, AI-driven enforcement seems to operate in a standard-like manner. This disconnect creates transparency, consistency and accountability challenges relating to the delineation of online freedom of expression that are not addressed in the literature, and require attention and mitigation. In this specific context, we introduce the concept of ‘rules by the millions’ to describe how AI systems actually operate through generating vast networks of micro-rules that evade traditional regulatory oversight. This phenomenon disrupts the conventional rules-versus-standards framework used in legal theory, raising urgent questions about the adequacy of current AI governance mechanisms. Indeed, the rapid adoption of LLMs in content moderation has outpaced the human capacity to monitor them, creating a pressing need for adaptive frameworks capable of managing the evolving capacities of AI.

Incels (short for “involuntarily celibate”) have recently gained notoriety for their aggressive, often violent, misogyny, yet incels were not always an antidemocratic social group. They thus pose a challenge for thinking about democracy and identity in (anonymous) digital environments: how can we create spaces for marginalized social groups while ensuring the resulting identities remain democratic? While many scholars point to technological affordances or corporate content moderation policies as providing some solutions, in this article I propose a more democratic approach. Drawing from incel wikis and archived forum posts from two early incel communities—IncelSupport and LoveShy—I argue that a community's social norms, and the moderation practices required to sustain them, are user-directed interventions that have outsized effects in shaping group identities in democratic ways.

Since the Internet’s mainstream inception in the mid-1990s, the global telecommunications network has transformed from one that offered egalitarian promise to a network that often compromises democratic norms. And, as its conceptual linchpin, Internet “openness” provided the potential for technological innovation that could revolutionize both communication and commerce. The regulatory schemes introduced in the early Internet era thus sought to advance openness and innovation in the fledging online world. But, while the times and technologies have since changed, the regulatory frameworks have largely remained the same. Accordingly, this review essay examines the Internet’s regulatory and cultural history to explore how the open values of the information age gave way to our current era of online disinformation. To do so, I reflect upon two early studies of the digital realm that have advanced discourse and scholarship on Internet openness: Lawrence Lessig’s Code: and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0, and Christopher Kelty’s Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Informed by these works, along with related digital scholarship, this essay argues that remembering the history of Internet openness reveals how the free access ideals of the Internet’s foundational age have been transformed by the renewed proprietary conventions of our current disinformation era.

This article offers a Baradian–Butlerian reading of Arendse & 42 Others v Meta, a landmark Kenyan case on outsourced content moderation. Moving beyond structural and subjection-centred framings, it theorises law as a site of ontological reconfiguration – where labour, harm and personhood are co-constituted through intra-action. Drawing on diffraction as an onto-epistemological method, the paper examines how the Kenyan courts reclassified digital labour, pierced jurisdictional separability and temporarily unsettled transnational corporate insulation. Yet, this legal aperture also generated recursive violence: moderators lost employment, residency and psychiatric care, even as their trauma became juridically legible. The paper challenges linear emancipatory or subjection-based accounts of such cases, arguing instead that law functions as a diffractive apparatus – producing patterns of recognition and exclusion without closure. It contributes to the governance of content-moderation scholarship by showing how Kenya’s legal system intra-acts with global capital to generate contradictory but generative juridical formations.

The Digital Services Act (Regulation 2022/2065, “DSA”) creates a new national administrative authority to enforce the DSA across member states: the Digital Services Coordinator (“DSC”). DSCs perform a linchpin role in the DSA enforcement. DSCs have a number of tasks that interact with the content moderation process, such as certifying trusted flaggers or participating in drafting codes of conduct. They also have significant investigatory- and sanctioning powers to enforce the DSA vis-à-vis platforms, shaping content moderation processes and protecting users’ rights against platform misconduct. These interactions with content moderation affect users’ freedom of expression. This contribution scrutinises the role of the DSC in light of that freedom, describing how DSCs shape freedom of expression online through their powers in the DSA, and identifying instances where exercise of DSA powers can lead to different levels of protection for freedom of expression across Member States in the decentralised enforcement network. Finally, it proposes avenues in the DSA to anchor protection of freedom of expression in the application of the DSA by DSCs, through pursuing centralisation in cases with significant fundamental rights impact, and encouraging better usage of guideline competencies.

This article explores the human rights standards relevant to ensuring human involvement requirements in EU legislation related to automated content moderation. The opinions given by different experts and human rights bodies emphasise the human rights relevance of the way in which platforms distribute automated and human moderators in their services. EU secondary legislation establishes basic requirements for these structures that are called to be read under a human rights perspective. This article examines the justifications given for incorporating human involvement in content moderation, the different types of human involvement in content moderation, and the specific requirements for such involvement under EU secondary law. Additionally, it analyses the human rights principles concerning procedural safeguards for freedom of expression within this legal framework.

In the digital age, “commercial sharenting” refers to parents excessively sharing their children’s images and data on social media for profit. Initially motivated by parental pride, this practice is now driven by child-to-child marketing, where young influencers shape their peers’ consumption habits. While regulations protect child influencers’ privacy, a significant gap remains regarding the rights of child viewers. We argue that commercial sharenting threatens children’s right to health under Article 24(1) of the UNCRC, potentially leading to harmful consumer behaviors and identity confusion. In response, China has adopted a fragmented regulatory approach to platform liability. This article advocates for a comprehensive legal framework incorporating content filtering, moderation, and reviewal to regulate commercial sharenting and safeguard children’s rights and interests in China.