Sidelights | A New Framework for Digital Platform Governance: Government, Industry, and Citizens Moving Forward Together

During the 2025 Annual Conference of the Taiwan Internet Governance Forum, titled "Local Participation with a Global Perspective: Taiwan's Internet Governance Dialogue Post-WSIS+20," the Open Culture Foundation hosted the workshop "A New Framework for Digital Platform Governance: Government, Industry, and Citizens Moving Forward Together" on the morning of September 23. Representatives from the government, industry, and civil society were invited to discuss the current status and challenges of digital platform governance in Taiwan and engage in in-depth exchanges on potential future improvements.

Following a brief opening by Open Culture Foundation CEO Li Hsin-ying, government representatives Huang Hsin-han, Section Chief at the Digital Industries Administration of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, and Chen Mei-ching, Section Chief at the Internet Communication Office of the National Communications Commission, delivered presentations on the workshop's theme. Section Chief Huang concisely explained the government's current governance principles regarding digital platforms: pursuant to the Basic Norms and Division of Labor Principles for Internet Content Management, if an internet-related matter has a counterpart in the physical world, it shall in principle be governed by the respective competent authority for that physical-world issue; if it cannot be determined according to the standards set forth in said Principles, it shall be coordinated and handled by the Executive Yuan. Subsequently, Section Chief Chen raised a fundamental question: should digital platforms be under the exclusive jurisdiction of a single competent authority, or should they be governed by different authorities in a specific manner? Approaching the issue from a comparative law perspective, Section Chief Chen detailed the systems of the Netherlands, France, Australia, and the United Kingdom, explaining how various countries design their governance bodies, delineate powers and responsibilities among agencies, and set the timing for judicial intervention. Through these vastly different foreign legal systems, Section Chief Chen pointed out that effective governance is not simply determined by whether a single agency or multiple agencies are in charge.

Section Chief Chen then shifted the focus back to Taiwan's current status, briefly outlining past legislative proposals promoted in Taiwan concerning internet governance, leading up to the recently controversial draft Digital Intermediary Services Act. She pointed out that this history demonstrates that Taiwan still needs to build social consensus on "how to govern digital platforms." She noted that the decentralized legislative model adopted to address pressing issues such as "combating fraud" has the advantage of generating less social controversy, allowing direct regulation by laws and regulations pertaining to various physical-world issues; however, it also results in varying degrees of enforcement across different issues while increasing compliance costs for businesses. Section Chief Chen continued by explaining that after the legislative process for the Digital Intermediary Services Act was suspended, the government has continued its efforts to foster social consensus by issuing the draft Internet Communication Policy White Paper and holding public hearings.

Chen Mei-ching concluded: "The key to the good governance of internet digital platforms is not 'whether a single agency is uniformly responsible,' but rather 'whether a high degree of coordination can be achieved among various agencies.'"

Next, Attorney Lai Wen-chih, supervisor of the Taiwan Association for Internet and E-Commerce, presented the industry perspective. He argued that the government lacks a clear understanding of the actual operations of internet platforms, resulting in improper legislation and inconsistent administrative enforcement, which in turn excessively increases compliance burdens for businesses. Attorney Lai pointed out that the current primary problem is that the government uniformly treats all platforms as "media enterprises" that "actively" disseminate information, thereby mistakenly imposing the obligation of filtering information as a "gatekeeper" onto digital platforms that merely serve as information "gateways." Taking the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act as an example, which prohibits the promotion and advertisement of tobacco products or necessary components of designated tobacco products via the internet, he noted that due to vague legislative terminology and overly broad interpretations adopted by administrative units during enforcement, search engines might be improperly penalized simply because electronic cigarette-related search results appear. Attorney Lai further emphasized that legislation and enforcement must comply with the principle of legal clarity and the reservation-of-law principle; otherwise, the government may improperly infringe upon people's freedom of speech, and the resulting excessive controversies will be brought before the judiciary, causing judicial organs to receive an overwhelming number of cases.

To address these issues, Attorney Lai put forward three recommendations: First, the Executive Yuan should coordinate and comprehensively review laws and regulations concerning digital platforms to determine whether they violate the Constitution or conflict with other laws, and unify and refine key terms and definitions. Second, laws concerning digital platform liability should incorporate safe harbor provisions to prevent the aforementioned unnecessary cases. Third, because laws concerning digital platform liability often involve multiple stakeholders, governance models adopting "multi-stakeholder partnerships" should be utilized when designing related legal systems to alleviate antagonism between the government and the people.

Lai Wen-chih appealed: "The government should properly understand the operations of internet platforms and the problems in current related legal systems, and fully communicate with businesses to jointly find ways to reduce business compliance costs."

Subsequently, Shun-Ling Chen, Associate Research Professor at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, spoke from a community standpoint, pointing out the threats posed by digital platform legal systems in various countries to the survival of internet communities. Focusing on the case of Wikipedia, Associate Research Professor Chen detailed to the audience the legal lawsuits faced by organizations surrounding Wikipedia's operations in recent years. She first briefly outlined the defamation lawsuit filed in 2024 by Want Want Group Chairman Tsai Eng-ming against Wikimedia Taiwan. She then listed foreign cases such as the defamation lawsuit faced by the Wikimedia Foundation in Portugal and the digital regulatory lawsuit filed against the Office of Communications in the UK. By presenting these cases, Associate Research Professor Chen called on all sectors to pay attention: overly stringent internet platform regulations and oversight by governments worldwide may gradually make it impossible for the Wikipedia community—which collectively records and edits human knowledge—to maintain a foothold and survive across nations.

Finally, despite limited time, moderated by CEO Li, questions from the audience were enthusiastic and diverse, covering multiple aspects such as transparency reports of internet operators, corporate social responsibility, the draft Digital Intermediary Services Act, and the division of powers and responsibilities among agencies. Workshop attendees answered the audience's questions in detail one by one and engaged in lively interaction and exchanges.