Who's accountable for the online safety gap?
Online safety has become an invidious topic, with the widespread agreement on the necessity of online protections not extending to how best to guarantee those safeguards without compromising fiercely held individual freedoms and innovation.
Each jurisdiction has struck its own balance, creating competing obligations for businesses all over the world, not just the social media, messaging and search engine platforms provided by Big Tech. Compliance in one country could mean competitive disadvantage in another, or even contravening established data privacy laws.
Companies have started building dedicated teams and broadening the scope of existing staff to meet the urgency and scale of the task, with many regulators having already launched enforcement actions. The interactions between business and regulators at this early stage will set the tone of things to come, with some companies scrutinising the validity of enforcement decisions, the reach of certain regulations, and the demarcation of freedom of speech from hate speech.
This is why online safety is so difficult: it places fundamental rights (and regulatory regimes) on a collision course. Creating a strategy which is compliant but adaptable will be a major challenge.
The tech industry could adopt a high water mark approach, meeting the most stringent standards – such as those of the EU, UK or Australia – to ensure global compliance. But companies would likely suffer commercial disadvantages in certain markets and regulatory differences across jurisdictions would make total compliance unlikely. A single approach is not the answer.
And yet, a bespoke playbook for every major jurisdiction would prove prohibitively costly and cut against the borderless operating models used in messaging platforms and social media. Meanwhile, pulling out of high-risk jurisdictions entirely would be unworkable due to revenue loss and reputational fallout.
Most companies will benefit from a hybrid approach, where global standards designed to meet requirements in leading jurisdictions like the US or EU are combined with comprehensive regulatory mapping to identify gaps and the minimum changes required to meet obligations in other markets.
But the global online safety drive has only just started and lawmaking will continue, with static legislation singularly ill-suited to governing technology. This push by governments is unlikely to be uniform: convergence in one area will likely be offset by divergence in another.
In the first of our Code≠Law series exploring the rapidly evolving field of technology regulation, we explain the emerging online safety rules around the world, offer clear lessons on compliance, and explain the best strategies for engaging with regulators. Read the full report on our website – Trust at risk: Who is responsible for the online safety gap?
