"Counterterrorism Sanctions and Platform Content Moderation Infrastructure: Meta's governance of 'dangerous organisations and individuals - CSTPV Seminar Series with Gavin Sullivan

This paper follows how counterterrorism sanctions are translated and put into action through platform content moderation infrastructures. I argue that this translation is a powerful global governance process that produces key effects. It transforms the scope and coercive power of sanctions in far-reaching ways, expanding the field of pre-emptive security they enable and range of people they can target. And it reconfigures state-platform power and opens opportunities for powerful state and Big Tech platforms to work together to shift the terrain of global politics that are important in the current geopolitical context. The paper develops these claims by empirically focusing on Meta's Dangerous Organisations and Individuals (DOI) policy and enforcement infrastructure. It draws on several years of engagement with Meta's DOI team — both as a stakeholder in various DOI policy reform processes, and as a researcher following how Meta's DOI infrastructure governs terrorism and violent extremism online.