International human rights law in content moderation and the risks of ‘misdiagnosing’ its limits

International human rights law (IHRL) has emerged as a dominant discursive framework for articulating and addressing issues raised by digital platforms. Despite its potential to offer a global language to articulate and address the questions raised by digital platforms, the ‘IHRL project’ has its detractors, who argue that this normative framework is inadequate to address the unique challenges that these new actors and technologies pose. Taking content moderation as a framework of analysis, this article critically engages with the criticisms aimed at IHRL in this sphere and questions whether these critiques are diagnosing an inadequacy of IHRL in content moderation. The article argues that the limits of IHRL that have been identified originate from and reflect a traditional approach to international law, and offers an alternative diagnosis: it argues that these ‘limits’ are in fact symptomatic of instances of change in international law.