The international tax regulatory approach as a model for platform content moderation
Defeating disinformation : digital platform responsibility, regulation, and content moderation on the global technological commons, 2025There is a potentially correct analogy between international tax regulation and platform content regulation because there is an homology between capital and information. On this basis, this chapter foregrounds three resemblances between tax regulation and content moderation. First, non-State actors access, manage and regulate through platforms flows of capital and similarly flows of information exploiting regulatory differentials, so that there is the need for regulatory alignment in both cases. Second, since both capital and information escape the regulatory reach of States, a common standard must be achieved in both cases. Third, such common standard can be achieved only if home States of Global Actors owning platforms assume together the obligation to moderate profit diversion as well as immoderate use of platform content through procedural accountability. The chapter explains the scope of the global tax problem, and then details the process by which policies have been developed and describes the tax implications of platforms. The chapter concludes suggesting lessons that can be learned from tax regulation for platform responsibility rules: the homology between capital and information points to regulatory structures that reduce excessive opportunism and immoderation in the use of computational capital by platforms.