On January 6, 2025, the implementation of project No. КП06-ДВ/6 of December 17, 2024, The Online/Offline Divide: Can Pre-Digital Law Govern the Online World? Focus on freedom of expression at the Meta Oversight Board, funded under the National Scientific Program "ВИХРЕН-2024", Bulgarian National Sciece Fund, Ministry of Education and Science, began. For our university, this is the first project under this Program. The project has a duration of 60 months and a total budget of BGN 788,700. The project coordinator is Dr. Bilyana Petkova. Before joining the research team of UNWE, Dr. Petkova taught international law at Middlesex University, London and was the head of the Department of Law and Digital Technologies at the University of Graz, Austria.

The project offers an in-depth examination of the right to free speech on a global scale. Today, social networks moderate our speech – they take down or leave speech online that is flagged as illegal or simply offensive. This role leaves behind public courts, which are still primarily responsible for adjudicating speech issues in the physical world. Is there then an online/offline divide when it comes to the standard for protecting free speech globally? This project first discusses the institutional structure of a new private body that could play a crucial role in protecting free speech globally – the Meta Oversight Board. It then points out the differences in the way free speech is adjudicated by the highest public courts in the United States and in Europe, in order to clarify the potential unifying role of the Meta Oversight Board. This convergence of standards and the role of the Meta Oversight Board has not been studied before. The project highlights some of the differences in the protection of free speech between Europe and the United States. While European public courts tend to provide almost absolute protection of privacy, the US Supreme Court offers almost absolute protection of free speech. Another divergence is the different judicial interpretations of the role of the Internet in the US and Europe. The project hypothesizes that there is a global but private standard for online free speech in the process of being created by the Meta Oversight Board. What are the perimeters of what is permitted and what is not permitted under this new standard? This project will propose a methodology that aims to explore the nature of the newly developing standard for protecting free speech online. To what extent does this standard deviate from the protection of free speech offline, which remains in the realm of public law?