Document details

Platform Oversight: A Neglected Link in Internet’s Regulatory Futures

Buenos Aires: Universidad de Palermo, Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión y Acceso a la Informatión (CELE) (2022), 34 pp.
"The first section of this article frames the discussion of oversight in the legal theory of governance; then it analyzes different initiatives of regulation, co-regulation, and self-regulation centering on a few aspects of the mechanisms that impact their independence, impartiality, competence, and effectiveness: who heads and imposes the supervision, the legal nature of the obligations that are supervised; the material and geographical competence of the body; the supervision mechanisms and the tools to implement said supervision. Finally, this article concludes that there are critical challenges to how current supervision is conceived. Strictly self-regulatory mechanisms (i.e. ToS or transparency reports), although positive, lack legitimacy; and the mechanisms that are being designed by the states, as will be developed here, require substantial inputs and amendments to guarantee their independence, their compatibility with human rights, and above all, their effectiveness in achieving their intended purpose. In this framework, this essay suggests that co-regulation with expert multistakeholder oversight could be a plausible and even desirable model for the supervision of cross-jurisdictional behaviors and services and evaluates the best practices and the challenges that this model poses for its adoption in other areas." (Page 5)
1 Introduction, 2
2 Governance and Oversight, 6
3 A colorful and diverse ecosystem, 12
4 A proposal for a co-regulatory model, 29
5 Conclusions, 33