From as-if trust to justified trust: Public trust as an ideal of platform regulation

Abstract

Although people rely on digital platforms in their daily lives, often acting as if they trust, expressed trust in platform companies has declined and public concerns have increased in recent years. Governments have responded by introducing and considering new platform regulation across multiple policy areas, from data protection and online safety to competition and artificial intelligence. This article examines whether such platform regulation is likely to be successful in building public trust and what conditions are required for trust to be justified. Given public doubts about the competence of government to regulate platforms effectively and the complex, political nature of regulatory decisions, I argue that regulatory trust building is not likely to be straightforward. I then turn to consider the importance of regulatory communication as a response to this challenge, exploring how regulators can communicate to build trust. I contrast strategic and deliberative-democratic models of regulatory communication and argue that only the latter can ensure platform regulation is justified adequately to affected publics and so generate justified trust.