Stefania Di Stefano

Human rights in the governance of digital platforms: introduction to the special issue Published in Transnational Legal Theory (Vol. 16, No. 4, 2025)

happy to see the final version of this Transnational Legal Theory SI on critical views of human rights in platform governance, which I co-edited with Barrie Sander, @hlahmann.bsky.social, Matt Canfield & Jelena Belic 😊

doi.org/10.1080/2041...

Lunch & Learn #8 Réseaux sociaux et travail : l'impact des chartes internes sur l'expression des employé.e.s, échanges avec Valère Ndior Le 6 janvier 2026 de 12h30 à 13h30 Les institutions et les entreprises prod...

regulation-tech.cnam.fr/lunch-and-le...
Si ça vous branche, je parle ce mardi (en ligne) de nos recherches en cours @univbrest.bsky.social sur les chartes de réseaux sociaux adoptées par les institutions pour encadrer le comportement des agents. Merci Suzanne Vergnolle @stefaniasds.bsky.social !

🔥🔥🔥so looking forward to reading it!!!

As a native, I don’t get it either 🫠

The US supreme court’s TikTok ruling is a scandal | Evelyn Douek and Jameel Jaffer The decision means TikTok now operates under the threat that it could be forced offline with a stroke of Trump’s pen

The "embarrassing, scandalous coda" of the Supreme Court's TikTok decision--new from @evelyndouek.bsky.social and me. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I’m so sorry for your loss, Sarah. Saying goodbye is one of the hardest things we will have to do, and it’s always too soon. ❤️‍🩹

Hack the DSA

Many thanks to the editorial team at Verfassungsblog for hosting our reflections and for their generous feedback!

🔗 You can read our piece here verfassungsblog.de/dsa-transpar...

This negatively affects the substantive assessment of the DSA reports, making it difficult to elucidating platforms’ practices.

We offer 4 practical recommendations to improve DSA reporting, revolving around harmonization, archiving, accountability for political advertising, and collaborations.

Drawing from the main findings of the Hack the DSA workshop we held in October, we explain that the DSA’s shortcomings in its implementation of transparency obligations primarily stem from the fact that VLOPSEs are prioritizing ceremonial aspects of reporting processes over their substance.

A few days ago, many large online services published their latest systemic risk reports. But are these reports helpful in understanding content moderation practices?

With Suzanne Vergnolle, we illustrate in @verfassungsblog.de why the DSA’s promise of transparency is failing to deliver.

🥲

Thanks for sharing, Stefania. This is such an important topic, which aligns with the recent interdisciplinary workshop on spatial open source intelligence that I co-hosted with my colleague @annalisaricardi.bsky.social at @unistrathclyde.bsky.social

Happiest birthday!!! Loki and Gaia send hugs 🎂🐾🦴

Introduction to the Symposium on Forensic and Counter-Forensic Approaches to International Law: A Cartography and Anatomy of Genocide [Stefania Di Stefano is a postdoctoral researcher in online content moderation at Cnam, Paris.  Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi is an assistant professor of public international law at Sciences Po Law Schoo…

The introductory post below provides an overview of the theme of the collection
opiniojuris.org/2025/12/08/i...

Thanks also to all the contributors for such insightful reflections. Marina Aksenova, Akanksha Bisoyi, Laliv Melamed, Giuliana Rotola, PhD, @christianew.bsky.social, @chris4short.bsky.social, Pedro R. Borges de Carvalho, @jemtseva.bsky.social, Madeeha Majid, @szarmsky.bsky.social and Sabina Garahan

Major thanks to the editorial team at OJ for supporting and hosting the series, and to my co-convenors Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi, @barriesander.bsky.social, and @dimitrivdm.bsky.social for bringing this project to fruition!

This series examines how forensic investigations are reshaping evidentiary practices and redefining accountability in international law. Our hope is that the contributions will offer readers generative insights for future engagement against genocidal and colonial violence.

The symposium draws from our Interest Group's workshop at the @esil-sedi.bsky.social 2025 Annual Conference, which featured keynote presentations by Francesca Albanese, UN SR on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, & Eyal Weizman, Founder of Forensic Architecture, chaired by Nahed Samour.

📢 On behalf of the ESIL Interest Group on International Law and Technology, I'm delighted to announce that today marks the launch of our new @opiniojuris.bsky.social symposium:📢

*Forensic and Counter-Forensic Approaches to International Law – A Cartography and Anatomy of Genocide*

🤓

Oooh seems I’m doing it right? 🥲

International human rights law in content moderation and the risks of 'misdiagnosing' its limits Stefania Di Stefano *International Law Department, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland; "Postdoctoral researcher, LISE (Cnam/CNRS), Paris, France ABSTRACT 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 THRL 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. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 17 November 2024; Accepted 31 July 2025 KEYWORDS International human rights law; content moderation; legal change; digital platforms; business and human rights

📖 I am excited to share the publication of my article "International human rights law in content moderation and the risks of ‘misdiagnosing’ its limits" on Transnational Legal Theory Journal!

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

1/

Bad cover versions of law: on the inherent limits of voluntary human rights obligations, as applied to internet companies doing content moderation This article argues that human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) in the technological sector are inherently handicapped by the voluntary approach to business and human rights in which they are conc...

Why the voluntary approach to business and human rights sucks (and a few things that can be done about it).

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KNN8T...

Congrats to you as well! Very happy to see your piece out and looking forward to draw from it for my current research on the DSA and its role as a BHR instrument!

As the landscape for the role of human rights law in content moderation is constantly shifting (see, for instance, the latest report of Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression), I look forward to continuing exploring these issues!

The article is available *Open Access* thanks to the support of the @gvagrad.bsky.social @gvagrad-law.bsky.social, where this research was conducted. 6/

I am also grateful to @abclapham.bsky.social, who has read *many* drafts of this piece and has offered invaluable feedback and comments, as well as to Molly Land for her thoughtful comments and suggestions. Lastly, I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thorough engagement with this work.
5/

The article is part of the Special Issue ‘The Promise and Perils of Human Rights for Governing Digital Platforms’. I’m grateful to @barriesander.bsky.social @hlahmann.bsky.social @rachelgriffin.bsky.social, Matthew Canfield & Jelena Belic for their generous engagement with the piece and feedback.4/

In particular, I argue that the limits of IHRL that have been identified originate from and reflect a traditional approach to international law. I instead offer an alternative diagnosis, arguing that these ‘limits’ are in fact symptomatic of instances of change in international law. 3/

The article engages with the main criticisms that have been aimed at the role of international human rights law in content moderation, and offers a new perspective on the value of this legal framework for addressing issues relating to platform governance. 2/