THE BYPASS STRATEGY:

PLATFORMS, THE ONLINE SAFETY ACT, AND THE FUTURE OF ONLINE SPEECH

Published in the Journal of Media Law (available here)

This article argues that the UK’s Online Safety Act and Ofcom’s guidance incentivise online platforms to adopt what we term a ‘bypass strategy’, where they create and enforce content moderation rules that are broader than existing law to bypass judgements of illegal content. This strategy aims to avoid complex legal interpretations of criminal intent and potential defences but would be unfeasible considering the volume of content on social media platforms and incompatible with automated moderation tools. We argue, however, that the Bypass Strategy, driven by the Act’s focus on illegal content and by the lack of clarity in Ofcom’s proposed guidance, poses a significant threat to users’ freedom of expression and incentivises overremoval of legitimate speech. We offer insights that could help Ofcom to improve its guidance on how platforms should interpret such duties on moderating content and might mitigate this risk within the constraints of the Act.

Written by Ellen Judson, Beatriz Kira, and Jeffrey W. Howard

Previous
Previous

Synthetic Politics: Preparing Democracy for Generative AI

Next
Next

Framing Ourselves Online