UK’s Platform Regulations Need More Scrutiny

The Online Safety Bill and the Digital Competition Bill need more scrutiny right now to anticipate some problems and deal with them in due time, Martin Kretschmer and Philip Schlesinger from the University of Glasgow told PYMNTS about the new approach adopted by the U.K. government to enact regulatory instruments to tame big technology companies.

The two professors explore how the United Kingdom will regulate Big Tech in the wake of the country’s withdrawal from the European Union. Their research was conducted within the workstream on intellectual property and regulation of the AHRC Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre (PEC).

The geo-political repositioning by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has presented a puzzle. Without depending on the EU for regulations, the U.K. is on a path to create their own. At the same time, Schlesinger said, it’s an almost impossible task given that no state can regulate colossal platforms on its own, and it’s clear that regulatory collaboration is needed.

“The term neo-regulation tries to capture the way regulators are recomposing their activities and trying to align themselves with the challenges of regulation,” Schlesinger told PYMNTS. “It’s a kind of informal formalization of regulatory power and thats an important step.”

A second aspect is the U.K.’s effort to distance and distinguish regulation from the EU and make more bilateral connections with other regulatory regimes.

“We were trying to capture the tensions between … the more authoritarian and the more libertarian dimensions of regulation in the way in which it’s shaping up,” he added. “And that’s also got a somewhat uncertain future.”

This year, the EU is expected to adopt the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA), drafted to regulate what Big Tech can and can’t do. At the same time, the U.K. will launch its Digital Markets Unit and publish a code of conduct the giant tech companies must observe. The U.K. is also working on legislation to regulate hate speech and harmful content online.

About a particular instrument that the U.K. is planning to implement to regulate Big Tech, codes of conduct, Kretschmer said that they could be a good thing for the U.K.

“They are more flexible, so you can respond to new conditions more quickly and in some ways, flexibility can be a good thing,” he said. “On the other hand, the model of codes of conduct treats platforms as a proxy for the state, and without proper oversight, that can also be dangerous.”

Codes of conduct may provide significant oversight to the government over companies’ practices. Thus, the proposed bills need more scrutiny.

“I think we need more safeguards. I think we cannot just delegate powers without scrutiny. It needs to be done in a transparent way and it needs to be reviewed in a transparent way.”

The first piece of legislation in this new era of tech regulation is the Online Safety Bill, which the U.K. government said it intends to implement by the end of March. The concept of the measure is the imposition of an online duty of care on platforms, requiring the removal of illegal content. For “high-risk, high-reach” services, this will extend to material that is lawful but harmful.

Meanwhile, the EU’s Digital Markets Act is a legislative proposal that intends to ensure a higher degree of competition in the European digital markets. It was fashioned to prevent large companies from abusing their market power and by allowing new players to enter the market.

Kretschmer said he sees similarities among the EU and U.K. regulators.

“The Digital Markets Act mirrors what will come with the Digital Competition Bill in the U.K. and the Online Safety bill mirrors the Digital Services Act,” he said.  “There is, in some sense, global consensus that both competition and content interventions are necessary, but they are articulated differently.”

The U.K.’s approach is attractive, Kretschmer said, because it offers flexibility and agency expertise. But it also poses challenges of coordination and of state direction which can end up as problematic outcomes.”

On the Online Safety Bill, developed to halt the spread of illegal and dangerous online activity that lives on social media platforms, Kretschmer said the report analyzed more than 80 distinct harms or societal problems the legislation was asked to deal with, some were illegal, others were unwelcome. But something had to be done about this proliferation of harms and pressured the authors of the measure, he added.

“They have, in our view, been insufficiently formalized,” he added.

Schlesinger agreed noting the DSA is more specific about illegal content, transparent advertising, and disinformation.

“If you look at the DSA, you’ve got quite precise notice on action procedures, you’ve got quite clear thresholds,” he said. “But when something needs to be done about a company’s size in the U.K., this is pushed into the future.”