Global Online Safety Regulators Network Aims to Enhance Content Moderation and Oversight

Eight nations, including Australia, the UK, France, Korea, South Africa, Fiji, Ireland, and Slovakia, are collaborating to synchronize their internet regulatory efforts to address online harms more effectively. This collaboration aims to streamline risk assessments, investigations, research, and enforcement actions across these countries. The initiative was announced by the Global Online Safety Regulators Network, highlighting a commitment to making their regulatory regimes more coherent and supportive of each other.
The joint efforts will focus on content restriction, user surveillance, corporate disclosure, and other oversight mechanisms to mitigate harmful online content. However, details on the specific types of content or online behaviors considered as “cross-border harm” remain limited. Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant emphasized the common challenges faced by national regulators in addressing global online harms originating from companies based primarily offshore.
The coalition plans to enhance content moderation by utilizing their collective powers to restrict harmful content, compel platforms to disclose safety processes, and scan user-generated content proactively. This coordinated approach aims to overcome jurisdictional limitations that currently hinder efforts to mitigate harmful online content.
Despite these collaborative efforts, challenges remain. For instance, geofencing content to restrict it in specific areas may not be effective due to the use of VPNs, which allow users to bypass regional content restrictions. The absence of US regulatory authorities in this network also presents a significant barrier to addressing jurisdictional issues, especially given the legal protections for platform liability under US law.
The network’s approach also involves leveraging potential service restrictions against platforms that fail to comply with content removal orders, drawing on previous instances where threats of service shutdowns have led platforms like Twitter to comply with government demands.
The initiative underscores a global move towards more closely aligned regulatory frameworks to address online harms, albeit with an acknowledgment that identical legal and regulatory frameworks may not be feasible. The focus is on setting precedents and building shared capabilities for removing harmful content, particularly egregious materials like child sexual exploitation and abuse content, which platforms universally agree to remove, albeit with differing opinions on the methods of removal.
This global collaboration marks a significant step in the efforts to regulate online spaces more effectively, highlighting the challenges and complexities of governing the digital realm across national boundaries.