Profilicity and online safety legislation

Abstract

This article applies the concept of profilicity to the emergence of online harms legislation. Grounded in social systems theory, profilicity designates a mode of self-presentation prevalent in social media environments, though discernible in the growing number of situations where personal identity is mediated via a profile intended to be publicly observed. Profilicity is distinctly different to ‘sincere’ and ‘authentic’ modes of self-presentation, though they survive alongside it. The concept productively reframes what is at stake in the regulation of ‘harmful’ content on platform-based communications, exemplified in the Online Safety Act 2023, which is subject to extensive criticism for invading privacy and mandating the censorship of lawful speech – values that evolved in relation to authenticity and autonomy. Profilicity engages law first via the identity techniques that law presupposes and second via the design decisions that it now regulates.