Defeating Disinformation : Digital Platform Responsibility, Regulation and Content Moderation on the Global Technological Commons

Considers balancing free speech and containing dangerous online content to reduce risks of digital platforms during elections, pandemics or everyday social interactions. Offers an interdisciplinary approach with insights from different geographies and parallel challenges of managing global phenomena with national policies and regulations.

Global platforms present novel challenges. They are powerful conduits of commerce and global community, and their potential to influence behavior is enormous. Defeating Disinformation explores how to balance free speech and dangerous online content to reduce societal risks of digital platforms. The volume offers an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon insights from different geographies and parallel challenges of managing global phenomena with national policies and regulations. Chapters also examine the responsibility of platforms for their content, which is limited by national laws such as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the US. This balance between national rules and the need for appropriate content moderation threatens to splinter platforms and reduce their utility across the globe. Timely and expansive, Defeating Disinformation develops a global approach to address these tensions while maintaining, and even enhancing, the social contribution of platforms. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.