Digital Bouncers: A European roadmap to navigate access rights and moderation issues on social media platforms

Digital Bouncers is a unique book confronting the complex issue of questionable content removals and account suspensions on social media platforms in the European Union, solving the existing legal ambiguity with a robust roadmap designed to guide decision-makers in navigating online access rights and moderation issues. Online content moderation is a well-recognised phenomenon. However, no consistent pattern exists on how it is done or legally dealt with.

What’s in this book:

The roadmap’s elements are deduced from a technology-neutral comparative case law study of four Member States (Denmark, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands) based on rigorous selection criteria elucidating the most salient distinctions characterising legal approaches to social media access and moderation. The ‘layers’ of the roadmap focus on the following central issues:

• the legal basis for social media platforms to impose restrictions
• platform operators’ right to shape access, including limitations to the platform’s right to exclude users
• the validity and enforceability of terms of service, and
• users’ and platforms’ remedies for breaches of the terms of service, including the procedural obligations in the Digital Services Act

Unlike previous work on the topic, this book does not focus on one field of law. Still, it touches upon and combines European law, constitutional and fundamental rights law, competition law, equality law, property law, and contract law, all reflected on and assessed through a European and a national lens. Dealing with these multifaceted legal aspects offers a holistic approach to resolving content moderation challenges and demonstrates which problems are most effectively addressed by which fields of law.

How this will help you:

The book’s roadmap can be used within the European Union to tackle and/or battle access and moderation problems on social media platforms. It will be a valuable resource for judges, social media platforms, and dispute resolution bodies, providing practical insights and guidance in navigating this complex landscape and streamlining decision-making processes. It will foster a balanced and fair approach to content moderation in the EU to ensure that all European users have equal opportunities for redress.