Many of the biggest online platforms have long argued they aren’t publishers of the content their users upload, merely hosts. The likes of Google, YouTube, Meta and TikTok claim they simply store and display information created by others, so should not be seen as legally responsible for it.

But a recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) makes that argument harder to maintain – at least in cases where the platform’s algorithm is deciding which content gets pushed, ranked or amplified.

The case relates to Coyote, a French driving assistance company which stores traffic reports submitted by users and redistributes them to the wider network. The question being tested was whether Coyote merely hosts its users’ information, or also controls (and benefits from) how that information is circulated.

The significance of this case – brought by the Conseil d’État, France’s highest administrative court and the government’s chief legal adviser – extends far beyond driving apps. It clarifies when a provider may lose the legal right of “intermediary immunity” for the user information it stores and circulates.

Traditional book, newspaper and magazine publishers have always been held responsible for their content. A defamatory article generally exposes the publisher to liability, since it chose to make the material available.

In contrast, technology companies have been treated as neutral intermediaries – closer to a corner shop stocking newspapers than a publisher producing content, with clear limits to their liability.

For these companies, the Coyote judgment is significant because it sharpens the boundary between neutral hosting and algorithmic control. A platform that merely stores user content is likely to remain legally protected. But one that decides, in its own interest, how that content is disseminated may no longer be.

One important caveat: as this case is from the CJEU, it does not apply to users in the UK and elsewhere outside the EU. However, it will affect British and international companies that have a significant audience within the EU. So, no technology platform can dismiss the issue simply because it is headquartered outside Europe.

What the court decided

A hosting provider is protected under Article 6 of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) if it lacks actual knowledge of illegal content – and then acts expeditiously once notified about it.

The question in the Coyote case was whether a service that stores and retransmits user-generated information still counts as a neutral host when its algorithm decides how that information circulates.

The court concluded that a platform can have no knowledge of a specific message’s content, yet can still have legal responsibility for its dissemination. Where a platform’s algorithm determines – in its own interest – the conditions, manner or priority with which information is disseminated, then the “safe harbour” of being a neutral host falls away.

This outcome was anticipated in 2019 by technology law experts Jennifer Cobbe and Jatinder Singh, who argued that algorithmic curation complicated the assumption that platforms are passive, neutral hosts.

The ruling does not doom every algorithm. Simple categorisation, such as showing all posts by one user or from the past 24 hours, remains close to traditional hosting. But ranking or promoting content in the platform’s own interest does not.

None of this makes these platforms automatically liable. Losing the exemption only opens the door to being sued – claimants must still prove the platform’s conduct actually caused harm.

Potential impacts of the Coyote ruling

1. For social media content

A social media company may remain protected when it stores user content or displays it in ways that are largely user-directed or chronological. But algorithmic feeds are different.

“For You” pages, recommendation systems, trending modules and paid amplification systems all decide what content is shown to which users and in what priority. When that decision is made in the platform’s commercial or service interest, Coyote makes it harder to describe the platform as merely hosting the content.

The same reasoning may matter for extreme or graphic material. If a platform simply stores content uploaded by a user, the hosting exemption could still apply. But where a recommender system repeatedly pushes that material to users because it drives engagement, Coyote gives claimants a stronger argument that the platform was not passive.

The content does not always need to be unlawful in itself. But claimants would still need to demonstrate both liability and harm.

2. For paid search

When a platform sells priority, decides how a sponsored result is displayed, and presents that result to users because doing so serves its own commercial interest, it becomes harder to argue that the platform is merely storing or neutrally indexing third-party information.

This matters because online advertising has become a major route for fraud and consumer harm. Following the Coyote ruling, claimants harmed by paid advertisements may have a stronger argument that the harm arose at least in part because the provider sold, ranked and prioritised that information.

But they would still need to prove the advert was unlawful, that the platform’s role fell outside immunity, that the promotion caused their financial loss or other harm.

3. In libel cases

A newspaper that publishes a defamatory allegation can be liable because it has chosen to publish it. In contrast, a hosting platform where a user makes and uploads such an allegation has not been treated in this way.

However, if the platform’s recommender system promotes that post or pushes it into feeds, the CJEU ruling gives claimants a clearer argument that the platform should be held responsible for increasing the audience reach of the allegedly defamatory content.

Changing the terrain

The Coyote judgment does not abolish hosting immunity – but it does change the terrain. It makes clear that the “safe harbour” argument depends not only on where information came from, but what the provider does with it.

The more a platform determines dissemination in its own interest, the harder it is to maintain that it is merely hosting, according to this groundbreaking ruling. And this, remember, holds for international as well as European technology companies.

Iain Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Whatever your politics or profession, leaders who dominate our collective memory are rarely the quiet, methodical ones. They are the ones who stepped on stage or screen and made people believe in a vision, a company, a movement or a future. They all had charisma.

Think of leaders who have captivated the public imagination: Martin Luther King Jr, Steve Jobs, Margaret Thatcher. Not universally liked, but they all had something.

In contrast, the UK’s “deeply unpopular” prime minister, Keir Starmer, has suffered for his widely perceived lack of charisma.

So what, exactly, is this seemingly magical quality? And why of all the characteristics we might prize in a leader – competence, integrity, careful judgment, ethical courage – do we so consistently fall for it?

The word “charisma” comes from the Greek khárisma, meaning a divine gift or grace. The German sociologist Max Weber first applied it systematically to leadership in the early 20th century. He described charismatic authority as a form of influence rooted not in any formal rules, but in a leader’s extraordinary personal qualities.

Today, psychologists recognise charisma as a cluster of characteristics and behaviour that signal authenticity, emotional competence, persuasiveness, passion and enthusiasm – and which together mobilise followers towards a shared goal or activity.

Success influences perceptions of charisma, of course. Perhaps more worryingly, how someone looks is also important, and we form those judgments in an instant.

Ratings of charisma based on five-second silent video clips were found to correctly predict how some people judge leaders over much longer periods, using richer observations. In other words, we often decide very quickly whether someone “looks like a charismatic leader”.

Charisma is teachable

However, not everyone agrees that charisma is so superficial. Others, like the British sociologist Max Atkinson, believe it is primarily a social skill that can be taught. Perhaps, even to those who don’t have the requisite looks.

Indeed, few experts have done more to strip the mystique from charisma than Atkinson. His work focused largely on the content and delivery of political speeches – another key determinant of how people view a leader’s charisma.

In his 1984 book Our Masters’ Voices, Atkinson used systematic analyses of political speeches to demonstrate that what audiences experience as charisma in oratory is, to a considerable degree, the product of identifiable rhetorical techniques that reliably trigger applause and emotional engagement.

Atkinson identified a small number of structures that generate spontaneous applause in political speeches. These include two-part contrasts (“not this, but that”), three-part lists (“government of the people, by the people, for the people”), and the packaging of praise or attack in ways that signal to the audience when to respond in an immediate, unified way.

Such techniques have an immediate impact on judgments of charisma. They are not, however, accidents of natural talent. They are rhetorical devices at least as old as Cicero, and as teachable as any other communication skill.

Atkinson put this to a striking test in a 1984 Granada TV programme. He coached a speaker with no prior public speaking experience to deliver a conference address to the Social Democratic Party’s annual conference.

The coached speaker won multiple rounds of applause and a standing ovation. BBC commentator Sir Robin Day called it “the most refreshing speech we’ve heard so far”. The audience had no idea they were responding to a method.

This anticipated what researchers such as John Antonakis would later confirm: charismatic leadership involves specific, teachable behaviour. He identified both verbal features (including use of metaphor, storytelling, and rhetorical questions) and nonverbal ones (animated voice, open gestures, facial expressiveness).

Speeches that used more of these features received significantly higher ratings for trust, competence and leadership potential from independent raters. This work points to the same uncomfortable conclusion: much of what we experience as a leader’s natural magnetism is, in fact, a performance based on specific features that can be deliberately scripted.

Evolved strategy

Why, then, are we so susceptible to these signals? One answer comes from evolutionary psychology. Charismatic leadership is thought to be an evolved strategy for group coordination.

Our brains evolved in small-group environments where following an inspiring, confident individual in times of threat may have helped us survive because we acted together.

This may help explain why we are more susceptible to charismatic leaders in times of crisis. When things feel uncertain or dangerous, people might reach for the visionary. Yet the very leaders we feel most drawn to in those moments – the boldly confident, the certain, the inspiring – may not always be well-suited to navigating such complexity, if they resist the open-minded, ambiguity-tolerant thinking that difficult problems require.

There is another important consideration. The qualities that make someone appear charismatic overlap with some less flattering personality profiles. Studies have revealed positive correlations between charisma in leaders and narcissism.

While narcissism may help leaders rise to positions of power, it does not predict effectiveness once in those roles. Indeed, an inverted U-shaped relationship between charismatic personality and leader effectiveness has been found.

Charisma is clearly not without value. The ability to communicate a compelling vision, build trust and mobilise people towards a common goal is very important, as is the resultant hope.

But the modern obsession with charisma as a primary criterion for leadership can be distorting. We can end up giving too much weight to charisma in selection decisions, and too little to qualities like integrity, intellectual humility, and the willingness to say “I don’t know”.

The task of a sophisticated follower, whether in a boardroom, a ballot box or a town hall meeting, is surely to slow down, look past the performance, and ask harder questions. Remember, first impressions are not always right, but they are incredibly sticky.

Geoff Beattie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.