Restricting the access to legal content online: are European consumer protection laws capable of securing fundamental rights protection?
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
When the access to opinions that differ from the majority in society are restricted, progress in (controversial) debates would quickly stagnate. A change in society often takes off because a small number of people disagree with the status quo and challenge it, such as for example pro-euthanasia activist Alain Cocq’s initiative to demonstrate his personal suffering due to a lack of access to active euthanasia in France. In September 2020, Facebook prohibited and blocked the live streaming of his euthanasia attempt. The social media platform did not refer to the fact that active euthanasia is illegal under French law, nor that President Macron has denied Cocq’s request for euthanasia. Rather, it based its decision solely on its own house rules. According to Facebook, allowing Cocq to stream his death would go against its Community Standards which prohibits portrayals of suicide. <br/><br/>One could wonder how that decision would have turned out if identical content was live streamed by a Dutch, a Canadian or a Colombian national – all countries where active euthanasia is legal. Despite the fact that there is no consensus on the legality of euthanasia worldwide, Facebook chose to regulate the matter privately, and consequently applies a unified rule to its 2.7 billion users worldwide. This paper focuses on the freedom of (online) private companies to draft and enforce such house rules. On the one hand, private companies enjoy the freedom to conduct business, which should not be unnecessary restricted by state intervention. On the other hand, online platforms have grown into major sources of information, with over 57 percent of US millennials, and over 50 percent of adults in seven European Member States, accessing their news through social media. With so many people actively using online platforms to impart information, restricting the access to legal content poses a risk to a pluralist debate, and consequently can negatively affect societal progress as a whole. <br/><br/>This paper sheds new light on the current debate on online content regulation. Firstly, it will show that European legislation predominantly focuses on the prevention of illegal and harmful content on online platforms. A discussion on the regulation of legal content by (monopolistic) private companies has been largely omitted in the European Union. Secondly, it will evaluate whether the current European legal framework can curve this type of ‘selective censorship’ by private companies. To do so, the author focuses on the limits of the platforms’ freedom to conduct a business, and subsequently assessed whether current European consumer protection laws, aiming at the protection of the weaker party, are sufficient to safeguard users’ fundamental rights protection. Lastly, the paper defines to what extent online platforms can limit online access to legal content in their house rules and concludes whether it is time to look closer into the desirability of additional European regulation. <br/>
Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.
Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction distillée sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Apprise à partir de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et de 10 348 étiquettes directes de Gemma. Le mode candidate est l'union des têtes enseignantes seuillées; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont ni des étiquettes humaines ni des étiquettes directes de modèles de pointe.
Scores Codex et Gemma par catégorie
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,002 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,000 | 0,001 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,003 | 0,001 |
| Communication savante | 0,000 | 0,001 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,001 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,042 | 0,004 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; les deux têtes enseignantes s’accordent sur ce qui est montré ici.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».