Program on Platform Regulation | Director
Daphne Keller's work focuses on platform regulation and Internet users' rights. She has testified before legislatures, courts, and regulatory bodies around the world, and published both academically and in popular press on topics including platform content moderation practices, constitutional and human rights law, copyright, data protection, and national courts' global takedown orders. Her recent work focuses on legal protections for users’ free expression rights when state and private power intersect, particularly through platforms’ enforcement of Terms of Service or use of algorithmic ranking and recommendations. Until 2020, Daphne was the Director of Intermediary Liability at Stanford's Center for Internet and Society. She also served until 2015 as Associate General Counsel for Google, where she had primary responsibility for the company’s search products. Daphne has taught Internet law at Stanford, Berkeley, and Duke law schools. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, Brown University, and Head Start.
Other Affiliations and Roles:
Lecturer, Stanford Law School
Affiliated Fellow, Yale Information Society Project
Consultant, small and mid-sized platforms including Pinterest and Bash
Board Member, Public Knowledge
Advisory Council Member, Center for Democracy and Technology
Pro bono counsel to plaintiffs, Woodhull v. Barr
Representative Publications (complete list is here)
Academic:
The Future of Platform Power: Making Middleware Work, Journal of Democracy article looking at the "middleware" solution (July 2021)
Amplification and Its Discontents, paper exploring the troublingly popular idea that government can side-step free expression concerns by regulating online speech that platforms recommend. algorithmically. The analysis primarily addresses limits based in first amendment law (June 2021).
If Lawmakers Don’t Like Platforms’ Speech Rules, Here’s What They Can Do About It. Spoiler: The Options Aren’t Great explores common carriage proposals, FCC-style indecency or fairness proposals, and alternatives that would rely on user choice or com- petition rather than government-created rules for online speech. Techdirt Greenhouse (September 2020)
Facebook Filters, Fundamental Rights, and the CJEU’s Glawischnig-Piesczek Ruling, GRUR International Journal of International and IP Law (May 2020)
Design Principles for Intermediary Liability Laws, working paper of the Transatlantic High Level Working Group on Content Moderation Online and Freedom of Expression, with Joris van Hoboken , (October 2019)
Who Do You Sue? State and Platform Hybrid Power Over Online Speech, Hoover Institution Aegis Series Paper (January 2019)
The Right Tools: Europe's Intermediary Liability Laws and the 2016 General Data Protection Regulation, Berkeley Technology Law Journal (2018)
Complete list of publications and recent blog posts here.
Other:
For platform regulation Congress should use a European cheat sheet, The Hill (January 2021)
If Lawmakers Don't Like Platforms' Speech Rules, Here's What They Can Do About It. Spoiler: The Options Aren't Great, Techdirt (September 2020)
Facebook Restricts Speech by Popular Demand, The Atlantic (September 2019)
The Stubborn, Misguided Myth that Internet Platforms Must Be ‘Neutral’, Washington Post (July 2019)
Don’t Force Google to Export Other Countries’ Laws, New York Times (September 2018)
Blog Posts:
Privacy, Middleware, and Interoperability: Can Technical Solutions, Including Blockchain, Help Us Avoid Hard Tradeoffs? (August, 2021)
Some Humility About Transparency (March 2021)
Six Constitutional Hurdles for Platform Speech Regulation (January 2021)
Other posts here
