Conference “The responsibility of social networks and platforms for illegal content: solving the dilemma”

The Externado de Colombia University and its Telecommunications Law Department invite to the conference offered by professor Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, professor of Commercial Law at the Carlos III University of Madrid.

Platforms represent the new architecture of digital society. They are the new business, information, education, access to culture, and creation of public opinion models. Their dominance makes them amplifiers but also “gatekeepers” of services, content, and information.

Their strategic position places them, and us, as a society, in a dilemma: whether they should have a neutral role as pure intermediaries or should they intervene to prevent and, as far as possible, remove or impede access to an illegal content, false news, or incitement, discrimination and violence-oriented messages. This dilemma between neutrality and control, freedom, and censorship underlie from its configuration in the liability regime (“safe harbor”) for intermediation services providers.

Currently, the massive, viral, and global nature of social networks and platforms content gives an extraordinary dimension to the dilemma and opens a crucial debate on the responsibility model. The session will offer reflections on this dilemma from a European perspective, with the ongoing DSA (Digital Services Act) and DMA (Digital Markets Act) proposals.

SPEAKER:

Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell is a Commercial Law professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid, Of Counsel, Andersen, member of the European Union Group of Experts on Liability and New Technologies, and Member of the Experts Group of the European Union Observatory on the Economy of Platforms.