We shouldn't take the state for granted. Throughout most of history the idea of a single coherent state established over a well-defined territory was little more than a dream of even the most ambitious monarchs. Only following the end of the thirty year's war in 1648 did the concept of a state with exclusive territory and the right to be free from foreign interference begin to coalesce, bringing along with it the concept of state sovereignty. This new order went on to define much of modern international relations, where states are defined by dual rights and responsibilities: the inviolability of territory, and a responsibility to protect its citizens from violence. This territorial exclusivity allows the state to run elections, protect its citizens and concentrate resources within its territory. Done right, this governance supports peaceful societies and protects populations from violence and natural disasters.

In the 21st century we are now seeing a strange twist. As states and citizens begin to develop online personas and presences the boundary of state territory has become blurred along with the boundaries between our physical and digital lives. Things that occur online have real and tangible effects offline and in turn the online world depends on offline material and political systems to exist. As states struggle to develop and govern these distributed and ephemeral systems, they are challenged by new actors that control the online platforms and infrastructure that underlie online communications.

The Intangibility of Cyberspace

The ‘classic’ definition of a state says that it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in its territory. The state is allowed to protect its interests and citizens by arresting you if you break its rules, but other organisations are not. It is this power that allows the state to levy taxes to provide services, and enforce laws to protect its population who cedes power to the state in return. The other important characteristic of a state's power is that it stops at the border. Another state has jurisdiction over there.

Unlike states, social networks and content platforms are not geographically coherent. Their users and infrastructure can be spread across the globe, and whilst they may be legally registered in one place it is often not immediately obvious which jurisdiction each part of their sprawling estates falls under. For example, if X within the EU is registered in Ireland but operates data centres in the UK and Germany, the question of which state actually has power over it has no clean answer.

The amorphous structure that many online platforms take has made them difficult to regulate. The EU has battled Facebook over data protection, with Meta threatening to leave the continent in response to EU data regulations, and facing a 1.2 billion euro fine over their data handling policies.

Beyond social media many states and city governments have struggled to manage ‘sharing economy’ platforms like Uber and Airbnb. These platforms have been accused of undermining protective and democratically mandated functions of the state. Airbnb for instance has regularly drawn criticism for frustrating regulatory efforts, potentially exacerbating housing crises in cities like Barcelona. Similarly, Uber has been accused of illegal behaviour that damages the state's ability to effectively and faithfully enact transport and employment policies designed, at least nominally, to protect drivers, passengers, and the wider city.

Democratic Mandates vs Corporate Policy

As a consequence of this replacement of state regulation by corporate policy, states and their citizens must now weather the content and moderation policies of social media platforms like a storm or natural disaster. TikTok's poor moderation of content and user behaviour runs unchecked, exposing children to harmful content and users of all ages to outlandish conspiracy theories. On X, following the horrific Southport stabbings, disinformation spiralled into nationwide riots leading to more than 1000 arrests. X was also recently banned in Brazil after a judge said it refused to comply with local laws over misinformation and Facebook was implicated in recent unrest in the UK, with at least one user being jailed for posting hate speech. Further afield, Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed the platform was pressured by the Biden administration over (sometimes satirical) vaccine misinformation circulating on the platform.

It's a stretch to lay all the blame at the feet of these platforms, but their ability to spread harmful and false narratives seemingly beyond the reach of any state action has serious consequences. The state's ability to govern and enforce its laws is being disrupted by these platforms. Unchecked by journalistic regulation and integrity, social media platforms can serve as an incubator for disinformation, hate speech, polarisation and radicalisation. These platforms are algorithmically tuned to deliver content to users. The mechanisms they use to do this are opaque, and their decision makers not accountable to the public, despite the influence they wield.

How States Have Responded

Some countries, like the USA and India have taken or begun to take steps to ban specific platforms like TikTok, effectively cutting their populations off from the perceived negative influence they bring. China similarly blocks foreign social networks including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, effectively forcing their internet to align with the bounds of their physical and legal power. In all above cases easily available consumer technologies like VPNs and proxies allow those with even a little bit of savvy to circumvent the blocks. Even in China, which has made significant efforts to crack down on such technology, many gaps in the firewall remain. And the harm that domestic platforms can do when there is insufficient legal infrastructure to regulate them. The fact that X and Facebook are American platforms did nothing to prevent them being used to organise and promote the January 6th insurrection.

The UK, despite having limited physical and legal power over these platforms has responded after the fact by punitively targeting individuals who are responsible for posting and sharing disinformation or incitements to violence, thus avoiding the messy problems associated with regulating the platforms themselves. This has included handing down custodial sentences and threatening to extradite foreign citizens that have been encouraging violence. Online social networks follow a power law distribution, with a very small number of posters wielding disproportionate influence, so targeting these users specifically is potentially quite effective at preventing further damage. The disadvantage of this approach is that it is inherently reactive not preventive. If misused, it runs the risk of seriously stifling free speech. Individuals jailed or fined for their speech suffer tangible and harsh consequences for their actions whilst the platforms that exposed them to disinformation and hateful content in the first place are left unaccountable. Debates over accountability aside, laws that criminalise speech can also be abused and used to target political opponents of the state.

Targeting responses against specific inciting individuals may be appealing, circumventing the need to do battle with slippery and formidable platforms, but the state is not seriously at risk of losing power to trolls or AI bots. They are at risk of ceding territory to tech companies that contest their ability to make laws and enforce regulations. It is Airbnb as a platform, not individual tourists and landlords, that has reshaped cities like Barcelona and Amsterdam, effectively substituting company policy for housing strategy. In the same way institutions like the media and public commons like the internet are being de facto governed by corporate policy. With government regulators replaced by moderation teams who are vulnerable to being cut at any time, these platforms are essentially left ungoverned by the state. It is the policies and systems of these networks that create and encourage the content that spills over into the physical world. An approach which tackles these policies directly allows states to proactively shape the shared resource of the internet and prevent many of the negative effects these platforms can have in the offline world. The state answers to its citizens. These platforms answer to their shareholders.