Violent Content of Transnational Platforms and the Deliberate Disregard of Terrorism-Promoting Content in Relation to the December 2025 Unrest in Iran
Keywords:
Transnational platforms, legal liability, incitement to violence, omission, international human rights law, the events of Dey 1404Abstract
The expansion of transnational platforms’ influence within the digital ecosystem has generated novel challenges in the domain of the legal responsibility of platform operators. The events of December 2025 demonstrated that these platforms have moved beyond the role of “mere conduits” and, through intentional content management, have become influential actors in security developments. The present study aims to analyze the legal status of incitement to violence from the perspective of international human rights law and domestic legal doctrines, examining the responsibility of platform operators. The findings indicate that the liability of these actors extends beyond “positive acts” in the form of algorithmic amplification to include “omissions” or deliberate failure to control violence. Based on the principle of due diligence and the jurisprudential rule of causation (tasbib), platform operators bear civil and criminal liability due to their technical access to monitoring tools and their conscious disregard of content promoting terrorism and violence. This study emphasizes that silence and non-intervention by platforms during social crises are not neutral acts but constitute violations of international and sovereign legal obligations, resulting in irreversible consequences for human security.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Ali Yari (Author); Valiollah Ansari; Ali Akbar Esmaeili (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
