Profilicity and online safety

This article applies the concept of profilicity to the emergence of online harms legislation. Grounded in social systems theory, profilicity designates a mode of self-presentation prevalent in social media environments, although discernible in the growing number of situations where personal identity is mediated via a profile intended to be publicly observed. Profilicity is distinctly different to ‘authentic’ and ‘sincere’ modes of self-presentation, although they survive alongside it. The concept productively reframes what is at stake in the regulation of ‘harmful’ content on platform-based communications, exemplified in the Online Safety Act 2023, which is subject to extensive criticism for invading privacy and for mandating the censorship of lawful speech, values that evolved in relation to authenticity and autonomy. Profilicity engages law first via the identity techniques that law presupposes and second via the design decisions it now regulates.