Regulating Social Media Platforms: A Comparative Policy Analysis

1 The Decade Tech Lost Its Way, N.Y. Times, Dec. 15, 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/15/technology/decade-in-tech.html.

2 Among the positive developments brought about, at least in part, by the technology industry, the New York Times identified such items as the role played by social media in the 2010 Arab Spring, self-driving cars, and the applications of artificial intelligence. Id.

3 See The Decade Tech Lost Its Way, supra note 1.

4 See, e.g., Scott Shane, The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election, N.Y. Times, Sept. 7, 2017, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/politics/russia-facebook-twitter-election.html.

5 See, e.g., Vindu Goel & Sheera Frenkel, In India Election, False Posts and Hate Speech Flummox Facebook, N.Y. Times, Apr., 1 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/technology/india-elections-facebook.html.

6 See, e.g., Paul Mozur, A Genocide Incited on Facebook with Posts from Myanmar’s Military, N.Y. Times, Oct. 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html.

7 See, e.g., Carole Cadwalladr & Emma Graham-Harrison, Revealed: 50 Million Facebook Profiles Harvested for Cambridge Analytica in Major Data Breach, The Guardian, Mar. 17, 2018, available at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election.

8 Social Media Blocked in Kazakhstan on Victory Day, Net Blocks, May 9, 2019, https://netblocks.org/reports/social-media-blocked-in-kazakhstan-on-victory-day-eBOg47BZ.

9 See Graham Cormode & Balachander Krishnamurthy, Key Differences Between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, 13 First Monday (2008), https://firstmonday.org/article/view/2125/1972.

10 J. Clement, Facebook: Number of Monthly Active Users Worldwide 2008-2019, Statista, Jan. 30, 2020, https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/.

11 YouTube for Press, YouTube (2019), https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/yt/about/press/.

12 Our Story, Instagram (2019), https://instagram-press.com/our-story/.

13 See, e.g., Anne Helmond, The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready, 1 Social Media and Soc’y 1 (2015).

14 Tarleton Gillespie, The Politics of “Platforms,” 12 New Media and Soc’y 347, 349 (2010).

15 Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism 24 (2017).

16 Laura DeNardis, The Global War for Internet Governance 154 (2015).

17 Danah Boyd & Nicole B. Ellison, Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, 13 J. of Computer-Mediated Comm. 210 (2008).

18 Martin Kenney & John Zysman, The Rise of the Platform Economy, 32 Issues in Sci. & Tech. 61 (2016).

19 Casey Newton, New Legislation is Putting Social Networks in the Crosshairs, The Verge, Aug. 1, 2019, https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/1/20749517/social-network-legislation-hawley-privacy-research.

20 See State Social Media Privacy Laws, Nat’l Conference of State Legislatures, May 22. 2019, https://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/state-laws-prohibiting-access-to-social-media-usernames-and-passwords.aspx.

21 See Data Privacy Law: The Top Global Developments in 2018 and What 2019 May Bring, DLA Piper, Feb. 25, 2019, https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/insights/publications/2019/02/data-privacy-law-2018-2019/.

22 See Adrian Shahbaz, Freedom on the Net 2018, Freedom House, Oct. 2018, at 11. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism (“In the past year, at least 17 countries approved or proposed laws that would restrict online media in the name of fighting ‘fake news’ and online manipulation.”).

23 See, e.g., Camila Domonoske, Mark Zuckerberg Tells Senate: Election Security Is an “Arms Race,” National Public Radio, Apr. 10, 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/10/599808766/i-m-responsible-for-what-happens-at-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-will-tell-senate. Since 2016 there have been multiple hearings on social media in the U.S. Congress and in parliamentary bodies across Europe. The Senate testimony of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in April of 2018 about data privacy is a prominent example of the former. See also Emily Birnbaum, Artificial Intelligence Can’t Solve Online Extremism Issue, Experts Tell House Panel, The Hill, June 25, 2019, https://thehill.com/policy/technology/450246-artificial-intelligence-cant-solve-online-extremism-issue-experts-tell; Facebook, Google and Twitter: Examining the Content Filtering Practices of Social Media Giants, Hearing Before the House Comm on the Judiciary (July, 17, 2018), https://judiciary.house.gov/legislation/hearings/facebook-google-and-twitter-examining-content-filtering-practices-social-media; Examining Social Media Companies' Efforts to Counter Online Terror Content and Misinformation, Hearing Before House Comm on Homeland Security, June 26, 2019, https://homeland.house.gov/activities/hearings/examining-social-media-companies-efforts-to-counter-online-terror-content-and-misinformation); Adi Robertson, Watch Mark Zuckerberg Testify Before the European Parliament, The Verge, Mar. 22, 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/22/17377974/mark-zuckerberg-european-parliament-meeting-gdpr-streaming-how-to-watch); Hadas Gold, U.K. Parliament Committee Comes to U.S. for Hearing on Fake News, Russian Meddling, CNN Business, Feb. 8, 2018, https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/08/media/uk-fake-news-social-media-hearing/index.html; Alex Hern, MPs Criticise Social Media Firms for Failure to Report Criminal Posts, The Guardian, Apr. 24, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/24/mps-criticise-tech-giants-for-failure-to-report-criminal-posts-twitter-facebook-google-youtube; Graham Kates, International “Fake News" Committee to Demand Testimony from Tech Giants, CBS News, Feb. 15, 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/international-fake-news-investigation-to-demand-testimony-mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg-jeff-bezos-tim-cook-sundar-pichai/.

24 See, e.g., Tim Wu, Blind Spot: The Attention Economy and the Law, 82 Antitrust L. J. 771 (2019).

25 See, e.g., Jonathan A. Obar & Steven S. Wildman, Social Media Definition and the Governance Challenge: An Introduction to the Special Issue, 39 Telecomm. Pol’y 745 (2015); Nicolas Suzor, Digital Constitutionalism: Using the Rule of Law to Evaluate the Legitimacy of Governance by Platforms, Soc. Med. & Soc’y (2018), https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118787812.

26 Carol M. Glen, Controlling Cyberspace: The Politics of Internet Governance and Regulation 5 (2018).

27 See Michel JG van Eeten & Milton Mueller, Where is the Governance in Internet Governance?, 5 New Media and Soc’y 720 (2013).

28 See Lee A. Bygrave & Jon Bing, Internet Governance: Infrastructure and Institutions (2009).

29 See Johannes M. Bauer, Regulation, Public Policy, and Investment in Communications Infrastructure, 34 Telecomm. Pol’y 65 (2010), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1339043.

30 See Veneta Andonova & Luis Diaz-Serrano, Political Institutions and Telecommunications, 89 J. Dev. Econ. 77 (2009).

31 Jeanette Hofmann, Christian Katzenbach & Kirsten Gollatz, Between Coordination and Regulation: Finding the Governance in Internet Governance, 19 New Media & Soc’y 1406 (2016), available at https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/171970/1/f-19856-full-text-Hofmann-et_al-Between%20coordination-v3.pdf.

32 Id. at 1412.

33 See, e.g., Luca Belli & Cristiana Sappa, The Intermediary Conundrum: Cyber-Regulators, Cyber-Police or Both?, 8 J. of Int. Prop., Info. Technology and Electronic Comm. L. 183 (2017), https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-8-3-2017/4620.

34 Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, The Economic and Social Role of Internet Intermediaries The Economic and Social Role of Internet Intermediaries 9 (2010), https://www.oecd.org/internet/ieconomy/44949023.pdf.

35 Pieter Nooren, Nicolai Van Gorp, Nico Van Euk, & Ronan Ó Fathaigh, Should We Regulate Digital Platforms? A New Framework for Evaluating Policy Options, 10 Pol’y & Internet 282 (2018), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/poi3.177.

36 David L. Weimer, Enriching Public Discourse: Policy Analysis in Representative Democracies, 11 The Good Society 61 (2002), available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/12243.

37 See, e.g., Christopher Robert & Richard Zeckhauser, The Methodology of Normative Policy Analysis, 30 J. Pol’y Analysis & Magmt. 613 (2011), available at https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rzeckhau/Robert-Zeckhauser.pdf.

38 See Michael E. Kraft & Scott R. Furlong, Public Policy: Politics, Analysis and Alternatives (2013).

39 See id. at 117.

40 Id. at 121.

41 See id. at 184.

42 Shoshana Zuboff, Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization, 30 J. Innfo. Tech. (2015), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2594754.

43 See e.g., Andrew Chadwick, The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power (2017); Nathaniel Persily, Can Democracy Survive the Internet?, 28 J. of Democracy 63 (2017).

44 Jan van Cuilenburg & Denis McQuail, Media Policy Paradigm Shifts, 18 European J. of Comm. 183 (2003). New proposals are often controversial specifically because of the significant questions they raise about how freedom of speech may be impacted. For instance, recently in Singapore the passage of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act — a law that makes media organizations, social media platforms, and individuals all liable for hosting or posting false information — has met with forceful criticism. The new law empowers government officials with a range of new administrative capacities that include mandated content takedowns, account blocking and required content disclosures. Global human rights organization Amnesty International has stated that the law “would dramatically curtail freedom of expression in the country and beyond.” Singapore: Chilling Fake News Law Will “Rule the News Feed,” Amnesty Int’l, May 8, 2019, available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/singapore-chilling-fake-news-law-will-rule-the-news-feed/). In fact, the first administrative actions taken by the Singaporean government under the new law targeted opposition politicians who had posted complaints about the current administration on Facebook. See James Griffiths, Singapore Just Used its Fake News Law. Critics Say It's Just What They Feared, CNN Business, Nov. 30, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/media/singapore-fake-news-facebook-intl-hnk/index.html. More broadly, the trend of regulating online content is increasing. Australia recently passed a law penalizing social media companies if “abhorrent violent material” is not promptly removed from their services. Damien Cave, Australia Passes Law to Punish Social Media Companies for Violent Posts, N.Y. Times, Apr. 3, 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/world/australia/social-media-law.html.

45 Susan E. Dudley & Jerry Brito, Regulation: A Primer (2012).

46 See, e.g., Deborah A. Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (2012).

47 See, e.g., Robert Gorwa, What Is Platform Governance?, 22 Info, Comm. & Soc’y 854 (2019). Gorwa explicated a framework analyzing governance of, and by, platforms with a typology consisting of three main models: self-governance, external governance, and co-governance. This work is instructive for its contextualization of how evolving mechanisms within the platform economy can be understood in terms of traditional models of oversight. As a complement to Gorwa’s work, the approach pursued here situates modes of regulation, instead, under a set of categories based on overall expansiveness of the governance tactic.

48 Virginia Haufler, A Public Role for the Private Sector: Industry Self-Regulation in a Global Economy 8 (2001).

49 See Will Cathcart, Continuing Our Updates to Trending, Facebook Newsroom, Jan. 25, 2017, http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/01/continuing-our-updates-to-trending/.

50 See, e.g., Rob Goldman, Update on Our Advertising Transparency and Authenticity Efforts, Facebook Newsroom, Oct. 27, 2017, https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/10/update-on-our-advertising-transparency-and-authenticity-efforts/.

51 See Pavni Diwanji, “Be Internet Awesome”: Helping Kids Make Smart Decisions Online, Google Blog, June 7, 2017, https://blog.google/technology/families/be-internet-awesome-helping-kids-make-smart-decisions-online/.

52 See Kraft & Furlong, supra note 38, at 104.

53 Social Media Privacy Protection and Consumer Rights Act of 2019, S. 189, 116th Congress (2019).

54 See, e.g., Christopher Marsden, Beyond Europe: The Internet, Regulation, and Multistakeholder Governance — Representing the Consumer Interest?, 31 J. Consumer Pol’y 115 (2008). Multi-stakeholderism can be broadly construed to refer to the “institutions encompassing public and private sector actors and civil society stakeholders” that play a role in the articulation and enforcement of non-binding rules. This approach is generally situated at the low end of oversight and encompasses both self- and co-regulatory approaches. Id. at 119.

55 The Santa Clara Principles, Internet Pol′y. Observatory, http://globalnetpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Santa-Clara-Principles_t.pdf. The Santa Clara Principles is a small group of scholars, advocates and civil society groups collaborating on a new set of best practices for the content moderation function of social media platforms. Their declaration, “The Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation” advances three operational guidelines for improving content moderation by major technology platforms: numbers (more transparency around the volume of various content-related issues); notice (increased explanations and context for content decisions); and appeal (new accountability and redress procedures for contesting content decisions.

56 The GNI Principles, The Global Network Initiative, https://globalnetworkinitiative.org/gni-principles/. The Global Network Initiative is an international non-governmental organization focused on fostering freedom of expression and privacy on the Internet. With an impressive coalition of more than twenty-five members spanning civil society, human rights advocates, academia, and industry, a primary goal of the GNI is to offer guidance and issue recommendations to companies on these issues. These efforts have included a variety of proposed mechanisms for self- and co-regulatory oversight including audits and transparency reports.

57 K. Sabeel Rahman, Regulating Informational Infrastructure: Internet Platforms as the New Public Utilities, 2 Geo. L. Tech. Rev. 234, 248 (2018), available at https://georgetownlawtechreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2.2-Rahman-pp-234-51.pdf.

58 See Goldman, supra note 50.

59 See Associated Press, Facebook Announced New Ad Transparency Before Russia Hearings, L.A. Times, Oct. 27, 2017, available at https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-facebook-ad-transparency-20171027-story.html.

60 The Honest Ads Act, S. 1989, 115th Congress (2017).

61 Gorwa, supra note 47, at 13.

62 Goldman, supra note 50.

63 Facebook, Authorizing Advertisers to Run Issue Ads on Facebook and Making Pages More Transparent, Facebook for Business, Apr. 6, 2018, available at https://www.facebook.com/business/news/authorizing-advertisers-to-run-issue-ads-on-facebook-and-making-pages-more-transparent.

64 See Paddy Leerssen, Jef Ausloos, Brahim Zarouali, Natali Helberger & Claes H. de Vreese. Platform Ad Archives: Promises and Pitfalls, 8 Internet Pol’y Rev. 4 (2019), available at https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/platform-ad-archives-promises-and-pitfalls. In a detailed analysis, these authors argue that when constructed and maintained properly, “[A]d archives can not only improve accountability to applicable laws, but also to public opinion, by introducing publicity and thus commercial and political risk into previously invisible advertisements.” Despite these benefits, however, without the enforcement mechanisms of formal administrative rules, public oversight should be made integral to the process. Id. at 13.

65 See, e.g., Russell Brandom, Facebook’s New Political Ad Policy is Already Sweeping up Non-campaign Posts, The Verge, May 29, 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/29/17406658/facebook-political-ad-speech-block-russia-troll.

66 See Davey Alba, Facebook Bans Ads From The Epoch Times, N.Y. Times, Aug. 23, 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/technology/facebook-ads-epoch-times.html.

67 Issie Lapowsky, Why Facebook Will Struggle to Regulate Political Ads, Wired, Sept. 22, 2017, available at https://www.wired.com/story/why-facebook-will-struggle-to-regulate-political-ads/.

68 See generally, Factbox: How Social Media Services Handle Political Ads, Reuters, Jan. 9, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01/09/technology/09reuters-usa-election-advertising-factbox.html.

69 See Cecilia Kang & Mike Isaac, Biden Escalates Attack on Facebook Over False Political Ads, N.Y. Times, Oct. 18, 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/technology/biden-facebook-ad.html.

70 See Nick Clegg, Facebook, Elections, and Political Speech, Facebook, Sept. 24, 2019, https://about.fb.com/news/2019/09/elections-and-political-speech/. Facebook spokesman Nick Clegg has claimed that the company doesn’t believe “that it’s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny.”

71 See Jack Dorsey, Twitter Status Update, Twitter, Oct. 30, 2019, https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952?s=20.

72 See Scott Spencer, An Update on our Political Ads Policy, Google Blog, Nov. 20, 2019, https://blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-ads-policy. Google’s approach involves increasing restrictions for microtargeting political ads. According to Scott Spencer, a Google vice-president said the targeting of election ads has been limited to the following categories: age, gender, and general location (postal code level). See also, Daisuke Wakabayashi & Shane Goldmacher, Google Policy Change Upends Online Plans for 2020 Campaigns, N.Y. Times, Nov. 20, 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/technology/google-political-ads-targeting.html.

73 See Will Oremus, Twitter’s Ban on Political Ads Will Hurt Activists, Labor Groups, and Organizers, Medium OneZero, Oct. 31, 2019, https://onezero.medium.com/twitters-ban-on-political-ads-will-hurt-activists-labor-groups-and-organizers-c339908b841d. In the case of Twitter, Oremus has identified the challenges associated with a ban on all political ads: “The problem is twofold. First, defining which ads count as ‘political’ gets tricky in a hurry. Second, prioritizing commercial speech over political speech is itself a political stance, and not necessarily one that we should want our online communication platforms to take.” See also Shannon McGreggor, Why Twitter’s Ban on Political Ads Isn’t as Good as It Sounds, The Guardian, Nov. 4, 2019, available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/04/twitters-political-ads-ban (“A move to ban political ads still puts Twitter in the position of arbitrating political speech, as it must decide what is – and what is not – political. Identifying candidate ads is relatively straightforward, but identifying political issue ads is anything but.”).

74 Bill Chappell, FEC Commissioner Rips Facebook Over Political Ad Policy: “This Will Not Do,” Nat’l Pub. Radio, Jan. 9, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/01/09/794911246/fec-commissioner-rips-facebook-over-political-ad-policy-this-will-not-do.

75 See NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey, Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies (Mar. 2019), https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5794861-19093-NBCWSJ-March-Poll-4-5-19-Release.html. According to this poll, in 2019, 54% of Americans were “not satisfied with the amount of federal government regulation and oversight of social media companies.”

76 See supra note 23

77 The Honest Ads Act, Office of Senator Mark Warner, https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/the-honest-ads-act (last visited Feb. 4, 2020).

78 Id.

79 Analysis: Honest Ads Act Targets Americans, Not Foreign Actors. Institute for Free Speech, Nov. 1, 2017, https://www.ifs.org/news/analysis-honest-ads-act-targets-americans-not-foreign-actors/.

80 See Making Electioneering Communications. Federal Election Commission, https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-disbursements-ssf-or-connected-organization/making-electioneering-communications/ (last visited Feb. 4, 2020).

81 See Advertising and Disclaimers. Federal Election Commission, https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making-disbursements/advertising/ (last visited Feb. 4, 2020).

82 The Honest Ads Act. Stand up Republic Blog (Jan. 9, 2020), https://standuprepublic.com/the-honest-ads-act-2/.

83 See Self-Regulation Isn’t Enough for Online Political Ads: Congress Should Pass the Honest Ads Act, Sunlight Foundation, https://sunlightfoundation.com/2018/04/10/self-regulation-isnt-enough-for-online-political-ads-congress-should-pass-the-honest-ads-act/ (Apr. 10, 2018).

84 See Adam Sharp, “Honest Ads” on Social Media One Step to an Honest Political System, The Hill, Oct. 31, 2017, https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/357973-honest-ads-on-social-media-one-step-to-an-honest-political-system.

85 See American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy, Knight Foundation, Jan. 16, 2018, https://knightfoundation.org/reports/american-views-trust-media-and-democracy.

86 See Aaron Smith, Public Attitudes Toward Technology Companies. Pew Research Center (June 28, 2018), https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/06/28/public-attitudes-toward-technology-companies/.

87 See Kim Hart, Exclusive: Public Wants Big Tech Regulated. Axios, Feb. 28, 2018, https://www.axios.com/axios-surveymonkey-public-wants-big-tech-regulated-5f60af4b-4faa-4f45-bc45-018c5d2b360f.html.

88 See Gesetz zur Verbesserung der Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz - NetzDG) (Sept. 1, 2017) Bundesgesetzblatt, Teil I [BGBl I] at 3352 (Ger.) https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/Dokumente/NetzDG_engl.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=2.

89 See Wolfgang Schulz, Regulating Intermediaries to Protect Privacy Online – The Case of the German NetzDG, Personality and Data Protection Rights on the Internet (forthcoming 2018), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3216572.

90 See Danielle Keats Citron, Extremist Speech, Compelled Conformity, and Censorship Creep, 93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1035 (2018), available at https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol93/iss3/3. Consequentially, content moderation on social media can potentially result in “censorship creep” in which private companies gradually expand their speech controls to encompass not only manifestly illegal or dangerous forms of speech, but legal expression as well.

91 William Echikson & Olivia Knodt, Germany’s NetzDG, A Key Test for Combatting Online Hate, Counter Extremism Project, Nov. 9, 2018, at 1, https://www.ceps.eu/system/files/RR%20No2018-09_Germany%27s%20NetzDG.pdf.

92 Id. at 8.

93 See Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel, Facebook-Sperre - Wall of Shame, https://facebook-sperre.steinhoefel.de/ (last visited Feb. 4, 2020).

94 Heidi Tworek & Paddy Leerssen, An Analysis of Germany’s NetzDG Law, Transatlantic Working Group, Apr. 15, 2019, at 3, https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/NetzDG_Tworek_Leerssen_April_2019.pdf.

95 See Amélie Heldt, Reading Between the Lines and the Numbers: An Analysis of the First NetzDG Reports, 8 Internet Pol’y Rev. 2, 14 (2019), available at https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/reading-between-lines-and-numbers-analysis-first-netzdg-reports. (Discussing the actions taken by Facebook to avoid implementing a “user-friendly” mechanism for submitting NetzDG complaints, Heldt observes: “As long as platforms prioritise their own community rules, the effects on online speech remain more or less similar than before the coming into force of the NetzDG making it almost impossible to truly evaluate the impact of such regulation.”).

96 See Germany Fines Facebook for Underreporting Hate Speech Complaints, Deutsche Welle, July 2, 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/germany-fines-facebook-for-underreporting-hate-speech-complaints/a-49447820.

97 Schulz, see supra note 89, at 6.

98 A more extensive review of the criticisms of NetzDG lies outside the scope of this article. For additional analysis, see Schulz, supra note 89.

99 See Mark Scott & Janosch Delcker, Germany Lays Down Marker for Online Hate Speech Laws, Politico EU, Oct. 30, 2019, available at https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-hate-speech-netzdg-angela-merkel-facebook-germany-twitter/.

100 See European Digital Rights, Recommendation on the German Bill “Improving Law Enforcement on Social Networks” (NetzDG), EDRi (June 20, 2017), https://edri.org/files/consultations/tris_netzdg_edricontribution_20170620.pdf.

101 See, e.g., Reuters, German Hate Speech Law Tested as Twitter Blocks Satire Account, Reuters, Jan. 3, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-hatecrime/german-hate-speech-law-tested-as-twitter-blocks-satire-account-idUSKBN1ES1AT. In one instance, a German satirical magazine was blocked for its parodies of anti-muslim comments. See also Linda Kindstler, Germany's Attempt to Fix Facebook Is Backfiring, The Atlantic, May 18, 2018, available at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/germany-facebook-afd/560435/).

102 Athena Lam, 87% of Germans Approve of Social Media Regulation Law, Dalia Research, Apr. 17, 2017, available at https://daliaresearch.com/blog-germans-approve-of-social-media-regulation-law/.

103 See, e.g., Aleksandra Kuczerawy, Phantom Safeguards? Analysis of the German Law on Hate Speech NetzDG, KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP L., Nov. 30, 2017, available at https://www.law.kuleuven.be/citip/blog/phantom-safeguards-analysis-of-the-german-law-on-hate-speech-netzdg/. Summarizing two salient critiques of the law, Kuczerawy explains that NetzDG “does not differentiate between domestic and EU companies, which creates a conflict with the ‘country of origin’ principle. This principle, defined in Art. 3.2 of the E-Commerce Directive provides that ‘Member States may not, for reasons falling within the coordinated field, restrict the freedom to provide information society services from another Member State.’ The Act raised concerns, moreover, about its compatibility with the Art. 14 of the E-Commerce-Directive. This is because the Act calculates the period for removal starting with the reception of the complaint and not from the moment of obtaining actual knowledge.”

104 See Craig Timberg, Tony Romm, & Elizabeth Dwoskin, Facebook: “Malicious Actors” Used its Tools to Discover Identities and Collect Data on a Massive Global Scale, Wash. Post, Apr. 4, 2018, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/04/facebook-said-the-personal-data-of-most-its-2-billion-users-has-been-collected-and-shared-with-outsiders/?utm_term=.5bf30a13ac92.

105 See Louise Matsakis & Issie Lapowsky, Everything We Know about Facebook’s Massive Security Breach, Wired, Sept. 28, 2018, available at https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-security-breach-50-million-accounts/.

106 See Issie Lapowsky, How Cambridge Analytica Sparked the Great Privacy Awakening, Wired, Mar. 17, 2019, available at https://www.wired.com/story/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-awakening/.

107 California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.198 (2019).

108 See, e.g., Woodrow Hartzog & Neil Richards, Privacy’s Constitutional Moment and the Limits of Data Protection, 61 Boston College L. Rev. (forthcoming 2020), available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3441502. Hartzog & Richards have also characterized the CCPA in modest terms, writing that “it is relatively limited in scope compared to [a regulation like] the GDPR. It largely targets third party advertisers and other data brokers and imposes some but not all of the traditional ‘data subject rights’ outlined in FIP-based [Fair Information Processing] regimes like the GDPR.” Id.

109 See Kristen Matthews & Courtney Bowman, The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, Proskauer, July 13, 2018, available at https://privacylaw.proskauer.com/2018/07/articles/data-privacy-laws/the-california-consumer-privacy-act-of-2018/.

110 Adam Schwartz, Lee Tien & Corynne McSherry, How to Improve the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Aug. 8, 2018, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/how-improve-california-consumer-privacy-act-2018.

111 CCPA § 1798.150(k) (2018).

112 National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Request for Comments on Developing the Administration’s Approach to Consumer Privacy, Dep of Comm 83 Fed Reg Rep No. 187, at 48601, https://www.ntia.doc.gov/federal-register-notice/2018/request-comments-developing-administration-s-approach-consumer-privacy.

113 See Hartzog & Richard, supra note 108, at 28.

114 See Aly McDevitt, Survey: CCPA Still Poses Compliance Nightmare, Compliance Week, Dec. 30, 2019, https://www.complianceweek.com/surveys-and-benchmarking/survey-ccpa-still-poses-compliance-nightmare/28242.article.

115 California Department of Justice, Attorney General’s Office, Standardized Regulatory Impact Assessment: California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 Regulations, Aug. 2019, at 10, http://www.dof.ca.gov/Forecasting/Economics/Major_Regulations/Major_Regulations_Table/documents/CCPA_Regulations-SRIA-DOF.pdf.

116 Eric Goldman, What We’ve Learned from California’s Consumer Privacy Act So Far, The Hill, Jan. 11, 2020, available at https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/477821-what-weve-learned-from-the-california-consumer-privacy-act-so-far.

117 Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, Summary of Key Findings from California Privacy Survey, Californians for Consumer Privacy, Oct. 16, 2019, https://www.caprivacy.org/post/icymi-summary-of-key-findings-from-california-privacy-survey.

118 See Kenneth Olmstead & Aaron Smith, Americans and Cyber Security, Pew Research Center, Jan. 26, 2017, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2017/01/26102016/Americans-and-Cyber-Security-final.pdf; Finn Partners & Harris Poll, Harris Poll and Finn Partners Unveil New Metric For The Return on Investment for Social Good, PR Newswire, Nov. 9, 2018, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harris-poll-and-finn-partners-unveil-new-metric-for-the-return-on-investment-for-social-good-300747201.html.

119 See, e.g., Lee Fan, Google and Facebook are Quietly Fighting California’s Privacy Rights Initiative, Emails Reveal, The Intercept, June 26, 2018, https://theintercept.com/2018/06/26/google-and-facebook-are-quietly-fighting-californias-privacy-rights-initiative-emails-reveal/; Tony Romm, California Adopted the Country’s First Major Consumer Privacy Law. Now, Silicon Valley is Trying to Rewrite It, Wash. Post, Sept. 3, 2019, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/02/california-adopted-countrys-first-major-consumer-privacy-law-now-silicon-valley-is-trying-rewrite-it/.

120 See, e.g., K. Sabeel Rahman, The New Utilities: Private Power, Social Infrastructure, and the Revival of the Public Utility Concept. 39 Cardozo L. Rev. 1621 (2018).

121 Id. at 1672.

122 See, e.g., Daniel Kreiss & Shannon McGregor, Technology Firms Shape Political Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google with Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle. 35 Pol. Comm. 155 (2018), available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814?journalCode=upcp20.

123 See Peter Swire, Should the Leading Online Tech Companies be Regulated as Public Utilities?, Lawfare, Aug. 2, 2017, https://www.lawfareblog.com/should-leading-online-tech-companies-be-regulated-public-utilities.

124 See Rahman, supra note 120, at 1672.

125 See Jonathan Taplin, Is It Time to Break Up Google? N.Y. Times, Aug 22, 2017, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/opinion/sunday/is-it-time-to-break-up-google.html.

126 See generally, Ernesto Dal Bó, Regulatory Capture: A Review, 22 Oxford Rev. of Econ. Pol’y 203 (2006), available at http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/Dalbo/Regulatory_Capture_Published.pdf.

127 Erin Kelly, Zuckerberg: Federal Regulation of Facebook “Inevitable,” USA Today, Apr., 11, 2018, available at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/11/zuckerberg-federal-regulation-facebook-inevitable-faces-second-day-capitol-hill-hearings-facebook-pr/506235002/.

128 See Damian Tambini, Danilo Leonardi & Chris Marsden, Codifying Cyberspace: Communications Self-regulation in the Age of Internet Convergence (2007).

129 See generally Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (2014).

130 See, e.g., Adam Thierer, The Perils of Classifying Social Media Platforms as Public Utilities, 21 CommLaw Conspectus 249, 278-82 (2013).

131 See Cale Guthrie Weissman, Maybe It’s Time to Treat Facebook Like a Public Utility, Fast Company, https://www.fastcompany.com/40414024/maybe-its-time-to-treat-facebook-like-a-public-utility (Last visited May 1, 2017).

132 See Robinson Meyer, What Steve Bannon Wants to Do to Google, The Atlantic, Aug. 1, 2017, available at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/steve-bannon-google-facebook/535473/.

133 Tim Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age 15 (2018).

134 See The Antitrust Laws, The Federal Trade Commission 2019, https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws.

135 See Wu supra note 24, at 773.

136 See Wu supra note 133, at 123.

137 Chris Hughes, It’s Time to Break Up Facebook, N.Y. Times, May 9, 2019, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/opinion/sunday/chris-hughes-facebook-zuckerberg.html.

138 See Merrill Brown & Caroline E. Mayer, U.S. Ends Antitrust Suits against AT&T, Wash. Post, Jan. 9, 1982, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/01/09/us-ends-antitrust-suits-against-at38/6545a672-b488-4915-9064-8baf4da21590/.

139 See Richard Blumenthal & Tim Wu, What the Microsoft Antitrust Case Taught Us, N.Y. Times, May 18, 2018, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/opinion/microsoft-antitrust-case.html; Amy Howe, Case Files: Apple Inc. v. Pepper. Scotus Blog, https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/apple-v-pepper/ (last visited Feb. 4, 2020).

140 Elizabeth Warren, Here’s How We Can Break Up Big Tech, Medium, Mar. 8, 2019, https://medium.com/@teamwarren/heres-how-we-can-break-up-big-tech-9ad9e0da324c.

141 See Harper Neidig, Co-founders Call to Break Up Facebook Energizes its Critics, The Hill, May 11, 2019, available at https://thehill.com/policy/technology/443217-co-founders-call-to-break-up-facebook-energizes-its-critics.

142 See Kelly. supra note 127, at 127.

143 Mark Murray, Poll: Americans Give Social Media a Clear Thumbs-down, NBC News, Apr. 5, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/poll-americans-give-social-media-clear-thumbs-down-n991086.

144 Id.

145 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (E.U.) 2016/679).

146 Michele Goddard, The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): European Regulation That Has a Global Impact. 59 Int’l J. Makt. Res. 703 (2017).

147 See Lillian Edwards, Law, Policy and the Internet 107 (2019). Edwards contextualizes the historical development of “right to erasure” in the GDPR, noting that “[a]fter Google Spain, the ‘right to be forgotten’ also became part of the GDPR, and indeed, one of its most controversial provisions. Originally drafted before Google Spain, and mainly intended as a well-meaning attempt to allow children to hide the mistakes of their youth left for all to see on social networks, the final version in Arts 17 and 18 of the GDPR is much wider than Google Spain, in that it applies to all data controllers, not just search engines.”

148 Human Rights Watch, The EU General Data Protection Regulation (June 6, 2018), https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/06/eu-general-data-protection-regulation.

149 Miquel Peguera, The Shaky Ground of the Right to Be Delisted, 18 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 507, 509 (2016), (Peguera summarizes the origin of the right to be forgotten as originating from the Google Spain case in 2014 by the Court of Justice of the European Union explaining that the European Union Court of Justice [CJEU] was “address[ing] the issue of whether an individual may obligate a search engine’s operator to remove search results linking to information that included personal data related to that individual. The CJEU found that under EU law on personal data protection, a search engine does have the obligation, under certain circumstances, to accommodate requests from individuals who do not want links to information containing their personal data displayed among search results when a search based on their name is executed.”).

150 See Joris Van Hoboken, The Proposed Right to be Forgotten Seen from The Perspective of Our Right to Remember: Freedom of Expression Safeguards in a Converging Information Environment, European Commission (2013), http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents/VanHoboken_RightTo%20Be%20Forgotten_Manuscript_2013.pdf.

151 See Geert van Calster, Regulating the Internet. Prescriptive and Jurisdictional Boundaries to the EU’s “Right to be Forgotten” (2015) (unpublished manuscript), available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2686111.

152 Nicolas Suzor, Lawless: The Secret Rules That Govern our Digital Lives 134 (2019).

153 Geert van Calster, Alejandro Gonzalez Arreaza & Elsemiek Apers, Not Just One, But Many “Rights to be Forgotten,” 7 Internet Pol’y Rev. 1 (2018), https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/not-just-one-many-rights-be-forgotten.

154 Paul J. Watanabe, An Ocean Apart: The Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Divide and the Right to Erasure, 90 S. L. Rev. 1134, 1136 (2017).

155 Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna, Key Findings From the Latest “Right To Be Forgotten” Cases, Future of Privacy Forum (Sept. 27, 2019), https://fpf.org/2019/09/27/key-findings-from-the-latest-right-to-be-forgotten-cases/.

156 See Andrew Keane Woods, Three Things to Remember from Europe’s “Right to Be Forgotten Decisions,” Lawfare, Oct. 1, 2019, https://www.lawfareblog.com/three-things-remember-europes-right-be-forgotten-decisions. Woods identifies three important learnings from one recent case: “The first is that Google won the battle: The court concluded that France does not have the current authority to demand that its delisting orders apply around the world. Second, however, Google is losing the larger war against global injunctions: Europe’s highest court explicitly rejected the idea that global orders are inherently problematic or somehow incompatible with a global internet. To the contrary, the court left the door wide open — even put out a welcome mat — for future extraterritorial regulations of the internet. Third, contrary to the general story that Europe views and regulates the internet differently from the U.S., these cases share striking similarities to some of the most pressing regulatory challenges on this side of the Atlantic.”)

157 See Marie C. Baca, Facebook Can be Ordered to Remove Content Worldwide, E.U. Says, Wash. Post, Oct. 3, 2019, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/03/facebook-can-be-ordered-remove-content-worldwide-eu-says/.

158 See Parliament Street, GDPR: The Impact on Government (2018), http://parliamentstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GDPR-The-Impact-on-Government.pdf.

159 See Timberg supra note 104.

160 See Carole Cadwalladr & Duncan Campbell, Revealed: Facebook’s Global Lobbying Against Data Privacy Laws, The Guardian, Mar. 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/02/facebook-global-lobbying-campaign-against-data-privacy-laws-investment.

161 See Wanda Presthus & Hanne Sørum, Are Consumers Concerned About Privacy? An Online Survey Emphasizing the General Data Protection Regulation, 138 Procedia Comp. Sci. 603 (2018), available aat https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050918317277; Report: The General Data Protection Regulation, EU Commission/Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, March 2019, https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/ResultDoc/download/DocumentKy/86886.

162 A New Era for Privacy, Six Months On, Deloitte (2018), https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/risk/deloitte-uk-risk-gdpr-six-months-on.pdf.