From Contract Law to Online Speech Governance

For years, con­tract law has been a hid­den pro­tag­o­nist in the in the dis­course on plat­form gov­er­nance. he sound of this silence is espe­cial­ly salient against the back­drop of recent Euro­pean case law that uses the con­trac­tu­al tool­box to infuse social media terms of ser­vice with fun­da­men­tal rights, in par­tic­u­lar the free­dom of expres­sion. In this way, con­tract law has pro­duced – some­what coun­ter­in­tu­itive­ly – one of the most telling respons­es to the key con­sti­tu­tion­al issue of social media: how to rec­on­cile free­dom of expres­sion as a pub­lic val­ue with the pri­vate nature of social media platforms.