Strategic compliance narratives: Platform governance under the DMA and DSA

Online platform compliance with digital regulation is often framed as a question of effectiveness: whether rules are sufficiently or insufficiently implemented. This paper argues that such a perspective is insufficient for understanding contemporary platform governance. It introduces a new understanding of compliance and develops the concept of ‘strategic compliance narratives’. The goal is to capture how designated platforms adapt different regulatory requirements in ways that merely satisfy formal obligations, while also influencing user experience, regulatory legitimacy, and public trust. Based on the theory of legal endogeneity and examples from large online platforms’ responses to EU platform regulation it identifies three types of strategic compliance narratives: performative compliance, malicious compliance, and ideological defiance. In doing so, it shifts the focus from whether platforms comply, to how compliance can be enacted. It concludes by outlining policy recommendations to address these strategic dimensions of legal compliance.