Platform Regulation and the Protection of Fundamental Rights

The emergence and spread of online platforms have had a disruptive effect on society, bringing about significant changes in many social subsystems. Although the social impact of online platforms can be examined from a wide variety of perspectives and disciplinary viewpoints, the focal point of this paper is their impact on democracy and fundamental rights from a constitutional law perspective. Due to the specificity of operating models, online platforms have a disruptive effect on the exercise of fundamental rights and on democratic publicity and procedures. Hence, for years, the academic discourse has been advocating the imposition of public interest obligations on service providers, in order to protect the fundamental rights of users and preserve the integrity of democratic processes. The protection of fundamental rights is traditionally conceived as a constitutional safeguard against state repression (infringement): it compels the state to respect rights (in some cases, to ensure the enforcement of rights) and/or provides people the individual right to enforce their fundamental rights if need be. However, there are increasingly strong and convincing arguments suggesting that fundamental rights require protection not only against the state but also in private relations (horizontal effect). Such voices are only reinforced by the restrictive power of online platforms.