Platform Legitimacy Between Rights and Rule

This article examines the conditions for the legitimacy of online platforms and their relation to permissible acts of public interference. We develop what we call the Interference Conception of legitimacy and apply it to three categories of moral criticism that can be made against online platforms: that they have the power to violate rights, that they harm without violating rights, and that they inappropriately govern their users. We argue that violating rights and inappropriately governing directly undermines platform legitimacy, but not the fact that platforms cause mere harms. Furthermore, platforms are illegitimate and deserve strong interference primarily due to rights violations, with governance issues warranting weaker interference.