Liminal regulation and a sense of the governance of digital platforms
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
Legal Digital Talks 2024, Utrecht
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Extended Abstract: Legal Digital Talks 2024, November
Liminal regulation and a sense of the rule of law on digital platforms
Dr. Joaquín Santuber
Metverse Lab, Linz Institute for Transformative Change (LIFT_C), JKU, Austria
The design and architecture of digital technology are increasingly regulating and coordinating individual and social behaviour . Design decisions are defined by the organizational dynamics of big tech companies dominantly shaped by the Silicon Valley culture and values. That vision of the world materialized in the rules of algorithms and data displaces traditional forms of regulation and coordination of social life, from industry standards to the law . Not only that, but digital platforms are also privatizing enforcement and coercion .
Current governance models , at national and international levels, try to deal with digital platforms by adopting the same old mechanisms for novel problems ? regulation and policy making. It aims to regulate them in general and abstract ways, when the new forms of regulation and coordination are concrete, embodied and situated. The question is no longer whether a digital platform or service needs to be regulated, as technology is always regulated, but by whom it is being regulated and how . We argue that this form of pervasive regulation, which is embodied and situated, and co-exist with the rule of law are: the rule of the market, the rule of design, and the rule of data. This is what we call liminal regulation.
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