Judson, E;
Kira, B;
Howard, JW;
(2024)
The Bypass Strategy: platforms, the Online Safety Act and future of online speech.
Journal of Media Law
10.1080/17577632.2024.2361524.
(In press).
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Abstract
In this paper, we argue that the Online Safety Act 2023 and Ofcom’s guidance incentivise online platforms to adopt a ‘Bypass Strategy’, where they create and enforce content moderation rules that are broader than existing criminal law to bypass judgements of illegal content. This strategy aims to avoid complex legal interpretations of criminal intent and potential defences but would be unfeasible considering the volume of content on social media platforms and incompatible with automated moderation tools. We argue, however, that the Bypass Strategy, driven by the Act’s focus on illegal content and by the lack of clarity in Ofcom’s proposed guidance, poses a significant threat to users’ freedom of expression and incentivises overremoval of legitimate speech. We offer insights that could help Ofcom to improve its guidance on how platforms should interpret such duties on moderating content and might mitigate this risk within the constraints of the Act.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Bypass Strategy: platforms, the Online Safety Act and future of online speech |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/17577632.2024.2361524 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17577632.2024.2361524 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Online Safety Act; social media; freedom of expression |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10197070 |
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