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Abstract

Limitations associated with online regulatory frameworks can be better understood by integrating pertinent insights from medicine and theoretical biology. Using insights from the biopsychosocial model, we argue that contemporary Internet regulations are problematic for three reasons. First, they pay insufficient attention to the unique structural characteristics of our digital media ecology, which raise significant epistemological concerns for online regulators. Second, differences in human rights protection and constitutional structure present further challenges requiring keen sensitivity to political and constitutional contexts for optimizing regulatory calibration. Third, our digital media landscape is dominated by private digital platforms whose unprecedented power and business models increasingly imperil the quality and quantity of public discourse, and facilitate privatization of government censorship under the rubric of human rights protection. Without carefully considering these structural differences, regulators – much like physicians – can too easily find themselves treating only symptoms rather than the underlying ailment.