Timeline

Authors: Vittorio Bertola, Nicolo Zingales and Luca Belli The current debate on (data) portability finds its predecessor in the discussions on Mobile Number Portability (MNP), which emerged towards the end of the 1990s. MNP requires that, when switching from one provider to another, mobile telephone users must be able to keep their telephone number(s). The world’s… Continue reading Data Portability

Author: Nicolo Zingales This entry discusses: (I) the notion of ‘dark patterns’, its history and evolution; (II) a taxonomy of dark patterns; (III) existing regulatory and consumer advocacy responses to dark patterns. (i) A ‘dark pattern’ is a user interface design choice that benefits an online service by coercing, steering, or deceiving users into making… Continue reading Dark Patterns

Author: Paddy Leersen In the context of online services, ‘content curation’ refers to the selection of relevant content from a larger subset of available content. Thorson and Wells (2016) define curation as the “production, selection, filtering, annotation or framing of content”. In the modern environment of information abundance, curation fulfils an essential function. According to Thorson… Continue reading Content curation

Rolf H. Weber Self-regulation, as developed by the concerned (market) participants, can be strengthened by involving governmental agencies in the rule-developing and rule-implementing processes. Depending on the degree of involvement, the respective forms of co-operative rulemaking are called (i) co-regulation, (ii) regulated self-regulation, (iii) directed self-regulation or (iv) audited self-regulation (Weber, 2014). The most common… Continue reading Co-regulation

Author: Cynthia Khoo ‘Coordinated inauthentic behavior’ (CIB) is a term frequently associated with concepts such as disinformation, online misinformation, computational propaganda, and the mass leveraging of bots or fake accounts to carry out a particular set of actions or disseminate particular messages across social media platforms. The term originated with Facebook, which has defined CIB as “domestic, non-government… Continue reading Coordinated inauthentic behavior

Author: Cynthia Khoo See ‘flagging’. ‘Coordinated flagging’ refers to a form of the large-scale organized campaign where a group of individuals decides to simultaneously flag the social media content of a specific individual or specific group of individuals, marking such content as offensive, with the purpose of having the impacted individual(s) banned or suspended from the platform,… Continue reading Coordinated Flagging

Author: Catalina Goanta ‘Web Monetization’ is a term of art used to identify two aspects. First, from a broad perspective of the Internet’s history, it may encompass the ways in which content on the Web may be monetized, namely, how to turn website traffic into profit. Second, from a narrower perspective, it may refer to… Continue reading Content/web monetization

Author: Richard Wingfield This entry: (i) sets out the way that the term ‘content’ is used in common parlance and (ii) provides examples of existing regulation which define the term (or synonyms of it). Use in common parlance There is no universally agreed definition of the term ‘content’; it does not appear in any major… Continue reading Content

Authors: Catalina Goanta and Giovanni de Gregorio During the past ten years, peer-to-peer platforms have democratized and decentralized media services. It is currently possible for any individual around the world to make a social media channel or account (e.g., on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok) and make content for a living. These developments are facilitated by increased opportunities,… Continue reading Content Creator/influencer

Author: Chris Marsden ‘Common carriage’ is defined by the duties imposed on public networks in exchange for their right to use public property as a right of way and other privileges. Common carriers and public carriers are under duty to carry goods lawfully delivered to them for carriage. The duty to carry does not prevent… Continue reading Common Carrier