South Africa’s online-speech moment is complicated—and it should be.

The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies recently invited comment on a third iteration of its draft White Paper on Audio and Audiovisual Media Services and Online Safety (2025). That process demands that we hold together two truths at once: that freedom of expression must be defended against heavy-handed state intervention; and that a digital environment populated by opaque actors, inscrutable algorithms and profit-maximising platforms also presents significant threats to meaningful freedom of expression.

Real freedom includes the ability to examine the information we receive, understand how it reaches us, and form fully owned opinions — without manipulation, predation or arbitrary takedowns.

That is why the Freedom of Expression Legal Network (FELN), together with the Campaign for Free Expression (CFE), the Press Council of South Africa and the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) has urged government to adopt co-regulation: a scheme where government, platforms, independent experts and civil society each have defined, transparent roles. Platforms would develop and implement human-rights-aligned codes; an independent regulator – constitutionally insulated from the executive – would approve, supervise and enforce those codes with due process and judicial review.

Within that architecture, rights-based standards would apply to everyone, while enhanced protections would shield adolescents and children, recognising their particular vulnerability to design choices, profiling, addictive features and predatory behaviour. This is not a call for censorship; it is a call to build a system that makes freedom work online — accountable, transparent and safe.

What FELN argued

FELN’s core message is that South Africa needs a rights-based, independent and co-regulatory framework, not executive control disguised as safety.

Among the specific recommendations made by FELN are that online regulation must rest on narrowly defined grounds long-established in South Africa – incitement to violence, hate speech, child-sexual-abuse material – not vague notions of “untruth” or “offensiveness.” Oversight thereof must lie with a constitutionally independent regulator, not an executive agency such as the Films and Publications Board, which lacks the safeguards required to regulate speech.

For this reason, and conscious that South Africa already has a constitutionally protected regulator with deep sectoral experience. FELN proposes that ICASA lead online-content oversight under a co-regulatory model, supervising enforceable industry codes rather than censoring content itself. It is a model, rooted in Section 16 of the Constitution and which allows South Africa to protect children and the public from genuine online harms while preserving the foundations of free expression.

Beyond general online safety: protecting children

Children and adolescents require safeguards that go beyond general online-safety duties. Their developmental vulnerability and limited capacity to assess risk demand that platforms design systems with children’s rights and well-being at their core. In practice, this means introducing privacy-preserving age-assurance measures to shield minors from inappropriate content and feature – such as AI chatbots – and ensuring that default settings are inherently protective. Autoplay functions, push notifications and unsolicited contacts should be limited by default, and parental controls must be intuitive and easy to use rather than buried in complex menus.

Equally important is the design of the user interface. Platforms must steer clear of manipulative “dark patterns” that exploit a child’s psychology or nudge them toward harmful engagement. Consent requests should be written and structured in ways that respect a young person’s developmental stage and comprehension. To prevent commercial exploitation, targeted advertising to minors should be prohibited, and addictive recommendation loops strictly curtailed. These restrictions are not about censoring children’s online experience, but about protecting them from manipulative systems designed for adult attention economies.

Transparency is another pillar of protection. Platforms should be obliged to disclose, in accessible language, how their algorithms recommend or rank content, and to provide all users—especially minors—with the option of a chronological, non-profiling feed. Education complements these structural duties: major platforms should host engaging, age-appropriate digital-literacy resources for children, parents and educators, equipping them to navigate online spaces safely.

Taken together, these measures move beyond generic safety rhetoric. They translate constitutional and child-rights principles into tangible design standards, embedding children’s dignity and safety at the heart of platform governance.

Guarding against overreach

South Africans know how quickly “protection” can become censorship. FELN reminds the Department that content regulation cannot rest within the executive. Once state actors decide what may be said or seen – even if the objective appears noble – the precedent is dangerous. What begins as a “child-protection” tool can morph into an instrument of political control.

At the same time, leaving everything to global corporations who sometimes seem contemptuous of our legal system is equally perilous. Their opaque algorithms shape civic discourse and social behaviour without transparency or accountability. The answer lies between those extremes: a co-regulatory system that sets rights-drawn boundaries while requiring the world’s most powerful information intermediaries to operate under South Africa’s constitutional values.

A call for principle and urgency

As FELN notes in its submission, “South Africa has gone too long without a fit-for-purpose framework for online-content regulation. Delay carries real costs.” The challenge is not only speed but speed anchored in principle. Regulation must be technology-neutral and future-proof, capable of addressing AI-generated media, algorithmic amplification and coordinated inauthentic behaviour without undermining rights.

FELN proposes amending the ICASA Act, Electronic Communications Act and ECTA to confer clear authority on ICASA to oversee online-content co-regulation. This would include the creation of an Online-Content Code, a dedicated ombud, trusted-flagger systems and cross-agency coordination with the Human Rights Commission, Information Regulator, Films and Publications Board and Electoral Commission.

Freedom, safety and the public interest

The debate over online safety is too often framed as a contest between freedom and restraint. In truth, the task is to protect a digital sphere where expression can flourish — a space alive with argument, curiosity and connection, yet safeguarded against design systems that quietly manipulate attention and reward outrage in the name of profit. FELN’s submission insists that transparency and accountability are not limits on speech but its conditions: that only when the architecture of our online world is open to scrutiny can contestation remain genuine and civic trust endure.

If South Africa can empower an independent ICASA to anchor that vision — ensuring that digital design serves democracy rather than distorts it — it could help redefine what freedom looks like in the twenty-first century: not the freedom to be exploited, but the freedom to participate meaningfully in a shared, trustworthy and truly human online commons.

This article first appeared in News24 on 16 October 2025

Nicole Fritz is Executive Director of the Campaign for Free Expression; Justine Limpitlaw is an expert independent Electronic Communications Law Consultant. Together they authored FELN’s submissions, endorsed by CFE, the Press Council and SANEF.