With so much data moving around the Internet, there must be people who want to take advantage of that information. To protect our privacy, laws were put in place to regulate the Internet. These laws cover everything from censorship to data privacy laws.
Many of these laws were enacted in the wake of the growing awareness of how Internet companies could collect and misuse personal data. The internet is relatively new and continues to evolve, so laws can be challenging to keep up with. In addition, some laws incorporate principles from other legal fields that predate the Internet and can be open to interpretation.
As a result, internet regulations are often a patchwork of laws that try to address countless real and theoretical possibilities. Some examples include the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act. These laws are a step in the right direction but do not address all of the possible legal concerns surrounding internet technology.
In addition to these laws, many online platforms rely on social norms and market forces to balance free speech with the removal of harmful content. This is how you might find your comments being deleted on Facebook, or why a search engine may suggest different results for someone in the US than it does for someone in another country.
As lawmakers seek to pass more laws and increase internet regulations, they should be mindful of the unintended consequences that can occur. Just as it took decades for older technologies like radio and television to be regulated, it will likely take years to see whether new Internet regulations are successful in mitigating the harms that have been caused by an overly laissez-faire approach.