The aim of the project is to offer a critical and realist vision of what happens when internet intermediaries are imposed duties to balance and enforce fundamental rights in their decision-making, as concerns for example moderation of user-created content in social media or filtering of copyrighted content. Such new types of obligations have multiplied in recent EU laws. The rise of global platforms is a paradigmatic development of our time, affecting profoundly democracy and rights. The project uses transparency reports of intermediaries, decisions on user complaints, legislation, case law, technology standards and scholarly work and analyses them through many-sided socio-legal methods. The research will be conducted at the University of Turku. The results will be useful for Finland, the EU and other territories when selecting their regulatory strategies in a world where private global platforms and intermediaries possess unforeseen decision-making power over the rights of others.

2024

2028