Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: While the EU's Digital Services Act and the UK's Online Safety Act represent a major shift in Internet regulation, they suffer from a critical structural gap. These frameworks focus primarily on 'defensive empowerment'-enabling users to block or report unwanted content while neglecting constructive empowerment-the ability of users to decide what information they wish to see. The article argues that without collective institutions to signal content quality, users cannot assess quality beforehand, creating a market failure that pushes out expensive, high-quality content in favour of cheap, sensationalist, algorithm-driven content. To bridge this gap, the article proposes the creation of trusted content creators: voluntary, self-governing groups of like-minded content creators that certify content quality through cross-platform labels. By mandating that platforms allow users to filter their feeds through these external quality signals, the law can decentre the role of algorithmic curation and create new markets.
Source: Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
DOI: 10.1093/ojls/gqag013
Author: Martin Husovec
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,987
OpenAlex ID: W7135012705
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