States increasingly shape digital platform governance not only through public-law rules, but through contractual and infrastructural arrangements that condition market access and operational control. This Article examines how China, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States embed sovereign authority in platform governance through distinct forms of contractual intervention. In China, licensing restrictions require foreign firms to partner with domestic operators that assume statutory obligations of data localization, identity verification, and content control, embedding censorship within system architecture. In the United Arab Emirates, state control over telecommunications infrastructure enables discretionary, event-triggered intervention, allowing authorities to influence platform behavior through access-based leverage rather than continuous regulation. In the United States, constitutional limits on direct speech regulation channel governmental influence toward national-security mechanisms, particularly CFIUS mitigation agreements, which restructure ownership, data access, and technical control without prescribing moderation outcomes. Across these systems, contract operates as a mechanism for structuring the conditions under which platforms function, rather than as a substitute for public law. The comparative analysis demonstrates that digital sovereignty is increasingly exercised through control over infrastructure, data, and market participation. As a result, governance of digital speech is shifting from direct regulation of content toward the design of the systems that produce, distribute, and control it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
States increasingly shape digital platform governance not only through public-law rules, but through contractual and infrastructural arrangements that condition market access and operational control. This Article examines how China, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States embed sovereign authority in platform governance through distinct forms of contractual intervention. In China, licensing restrictions require foreign…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15,17,463],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-2","category-current-online-issue","category-forum-archive","category-volume-58"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4520,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions\/4520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}