Content moderation as traffic control: an analysis of EU and US legislation on platform regulation

This article investigates online speech governance as a case study of contemporary security practices, focusing on how states have tried to regulate the moderation of digital communication flows. Drawing on governance theories and critical security studies, the study analyzes and compares different regulatory regimes in the United States and Europe. Using a quali-quantitative analysis of seven legislative texts, it identifies three distinct approaches to managing information flows: free circulation, patrolling, and flow optimisation. These regimes reflect a shift in security governance from controlling content to channelling its circulation, embedding platforms within state-driven frameworks of transparency and accountability. The analysis reveals how legislation reshapes platform practices, transforming them into quasi-public entities subject to bureaucratic oversight. Platforms, in turn, adapt by integrating regulatory expectations into their operations, balancing compliance demands with their business models. Contributing to the literature on critical security studies, this article critically examines how these diverse regulatory regimes converge around a shared mechanism of security bureaucratisation. Rather than governing through direct content control, states translate security imperatives into administrative rationalities – transparency, auditing, and reporting – that programme platforms conduct and govern information circulation through continuous bureaucratic procedures.