Click by Click: Platform Design Centers Debate on Online Safety
Summary
Regulatory shifts in online safety are moving beyond content takedowns and toward intentional platform design, according to experts at the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion's 2026 Expo.
Policy Discussed
- •European Union’s Digital Services Act
- •Brazil’s Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents
- •Indonesia’s Government Regulation No. 17 of 2025
- •African Union’s Child Online Safety and Empowerment Policy
Published
June 2, 2026
Authors
Philippe · Angelica
Series
Industry Briefs
As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in social, economic, and political life, questions concerning the design and governance of online environments have assumed greater prominence within policy discourse. Researchers, regulators, and civil society organizations are taking closer examinations at whether the sociotechnical systems that structure online experiences adequately serve the public interest, or whether they require fundamental redesign.
“There’s many levers in the design of a technology that can incentivize, reward, or sanction behaviors,” said Lena Slachmuijlder, co-chair of the Council on Tech and Social Cohesion. “And that’s where we saw the gap.”
Our team attended the Council’s 2026 expo, “From Harm Mitigation to Intentional Design,” at the end of May, tuning into the Asia segment hosted from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The discussion went beyond downstream responses of harmful content to the core incentives embedded into their hosted platform design, as well as the regulatory tools emerging globally to govern them.