Den Umgang mit politischen Akteur*innen auf privaten Online-Plattformen in 15 europäischen Ländern untersucht dieses Working Paper. Es wurde von Martin Fertmann und PD Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann als Teil der GDHRNet-Working Paper Serie herausgegeben und ist als Open Access kostenfrei verfügbar.
Fertmann, M.; Kettemannn M.C. (Hrsg.): Can Platforms Cancel Politicians? How States and Platforms Deal with Private Power over Political Actors: an Exploratory Study of 15 Countries (Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut, 2021), GDHRNet Working Paper #3 (PDF)
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Executive Summary
- Terms-of-service based actions against political and state actors as both key subjects and objects of political opinion formation have become a focal point of the ongoing debates over who should set and enforce the rules for speech on online platforms.
- With minor differences depending on national contexts, state regulation of platforms creating obligations to disseminate such actors’ information is considered dangerous for the free and unhindered discursive process that leads to the formation of public opinions.
- Reactions to the suspension of Trump as not the first, but the most widely discussed action of platform companies against a politician (and incumbent president) provide a glimpse on the state of platform governance debates across participating countries.
- Across the countries surveyed politicians tend to see the exercise of content moderation policies of large platform companies very critically.
- The majority of politicians in European countries seem to be critical of the deplatforming of Trump, emphasizing fundamental rights and calling for such decisions to be made by states, not private companies.
- These political standpoints stand in an unresolved conflict with the constitutional realities of participating countries, where incumbents usually cannot invoke fundamental rights when acting in their official capacities and where laws with “must carry” requirements for official information do not exist for social media and would likely only be constitutional for narrowly defined, special circumstances such as disaster prevention.
- Facebooks’ referral of the Trump-decision to its Oversight Board sparked a larger debate about institutional structures for improving content governance. The majority of participating countries has experience with self- or co-regulatory press-, media- or broadcasting councils to which comparisons can be drawn, foreshadowing the possible (co-regulatory) future of governing online speech.
- Media commentators in participating countries interpreted the deplatforming of Trump as a signal that far-right parties and politicians around the world may face increasing scrutiny, while conservative politicians and governments in multiple participating countries instrumentalized the actions against Trump as supposed proof of platform’s bias against conservative opinions.
- Even without specific legal requirements on content moderation, submissions from several countries refer to a general – often: constitutional – privileging of speech of politicians and office holders. This could potentially support or even compel the decisions of platforms to leave content of political actors up even if it violates their terms of service.
