[2021] [resource] A Human Rights-Based Approach to Social Media Platforms
[2021] [resource] A Human Rights-Based Approach to Social Media Platforms
Rikke Frank Jørgensen considers what a human rights-based approach to social media platforms might look like in practice, highlighting the challenges and possibilities of applying international law to the regulation of online spaces.
In terms of human rights, social media platforms have a huge impact on how an individual may express, search for, and encounter information. Individuals may be subjected to discrimination through or by the platforms, or have their personal data and privacy restricted. However, as private companies they are not bound by human rights law, unless human rights standards are translated into national regulation. Such translation has happened in many areas of life—workers’ rights, protection of children, environmental protection, protection of journalists and press freedom, for example—but there is still no regulation that stipulates the role and responsibility of tech giants that have reached such a size and volume that their impact on individual speech, public debate, discrimination, and privacy may in many contexts be more significant than that of the state itself.