Are tech executives responsible for what happens on their platforms?

By Adam Satariano & Cecilia Kang

This month, X closed its Brazil operations after one of its executives was threatened with arrest for not taking down certain content. Last year, Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, pleaded guilty to federal money-laundering violations.

In 2021, Twitter executives in India faced arrest over posts that the government wanted removed from the site.
 

And on Saturday, Pavel Durov, who founded the online communications tool Telegram, was arrested.
 

For years, internet company executives rarely faced personal liability in Western democracies for what took place on their platforms. But as law enforcement agencies, regulators and policymakers ramp up scrutiny of online platforms and exchanges, they are increasingly considering when to hold company leaders directly responsible.
 

That shift was punctuated by Durov’s arrest over the weekend, raising questions over whether tech executives like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg also risk being arrested when they next set foot on European soil. For now, tech executives have little to fear, with cases like Durov’s likely to be outliers, experts said. Companies have been held responsible for a platform’s transgressions, rather than individuals.

And legally, the bar is high in the United States and Europe to prosecute individuals for activities at their companies, especially with US laws like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms from being responsible for harmful speech.
 

In China, Russia and other authoritarian countries, US tech firms have sometimes pulled out their employees to prevent them from being arrested. The concern is employees will be used as leverage to force firs to do things like remove content unfavourable to the government.
 

One challenge for prosecutors and law enforcement agencies is proving an executive had knowledge of illegal activity on their platforms and did not try to curb the harms, said Daphne Keller, a professor of internet law at Stanford University Law School.

That’s difficult to demonstrate, since TikTok, YouTube, Snap and Meta have worked to take down illegal content to law enforcement officials, so their executives can argue they tried to do the right thing. “Knowledge is the key issue here,” said Ms. Keller, a former lawyer for Google. “It’s the usual trigger for anyone losing immunity.”
 

Still, the risk of prosecution is needed to force tech companies to act, said Bruce Daisley, who was a vice president at Twitter before Elon Musk bought the site in 2022.

 

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