Platform Regulation in APAC and the EU: A Comparative Overview

Agne Kaarlep is head of policy and advisory at Tremau, a technology trust & safety start-up located in Paris. Ilana Rosenzweig is a trust & safety professional who has led teams across APAC and EMEA, including at Twitter. Noah Douglas is an early-career researcher and policy professional. Online platform regulation is advancing across the globe, with the European Union (EU) and the Asia Pacific (APAC) region at the forefront. The EU has enshrined its digital strategy as a flagship policy, while the past years have seen new and far-reaching regulations in various countries in the APAC region. As the EU cements its position as a leading regulatory force and APAC emerges as the fastest-growing digital market, the approach towards online platform regulation in these regions is of critical importance.  This comparative overview delves into the regulatory convergence and divergence between the EU and APAC, exploring the implications for services operating across these regions. The question thus arises as to whether services active in both regions face two widely disparate regulatory silos. We offer a brief overview of EU and APAC approaches to platform regulation, derived from an extensive analysis on the nature of selected regulations from the EU and APAC countries. The Expansion of Content Based Regulations: Content-Specific to General Approach Laws Both regions first approached platform regulation by targeting specific kinds of content and are now regulating platform behavior more generally. In the EU, platforms have had to comply with content-specific laws addressing such disparate phenomena as copyrighted content [AK1] and…Platform Regulation in APAC and the EU: A Comparative Overview