Who Controls the Platform? How Ownership Shapes Content Governance, a conversation with Paddy Leerssen

In 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X). Since then, he has steered the content moderation practices of the platform towards a new far right-course. At the beginning of 2025, Mark Zuckerberg also announced a new course for its social media platforms’ approach to content moderation, weakening the protections previously afforded to marginalised communities as well as measures against disinfomation and hate speech. These examples demonstrate how platform ownership may bear significant consequences on online content governance. Yet, platform ownership and its influence on content moderation practices remains a relatively understudied field.

But to what extent do the particular interests and agendas of individual owners shape platform decision-making? How different ownership structures have shaped media performance? With Paddy Leerssen, postdoctoral researcher in law at the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law (IViR), we will discuss how conditions of tech oligarchy can inform the study of online content governance. Drawing from precedents in media ownership research, and parallels between media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and platform oligarchs like Elon Musk, his work investigates how ownership research can inform our understanding of online content regulation.

This webinaire will be moderate by Bastien Savin, PhD candidate at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University. »