Niklas Eder

Niklas is a Senior Policy Officer at the Oversight Board and a Visiting Lecturer at the Dickson Poon School of Law.

At the Oversight Board, Niklas leads work streams on automated content moderation and strategic governance. This includes developing human rights approaches to machine learning-based moderation systems and issues such as generative AI. The strategic governance work consists of developing and implementing strategies to respond to emerging regulations, with a focus on systemic risk assessments.

Previously, Niklas was a Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, where his research focused on assessing societal implications of AI and regulatory responses. Niklas was also a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, conducting research on the reasoning and legitimacy of the European Court Justice in the context of conflicts on the rule of law. He worked at the Free University Berlin, Humboldt University Berlin and in the German Parliament.

Niklas previously taught the courses “Law in the Algorithmic Society” for the European Law School, “The Law and Ethics of Big Data” at Yale Law School, “European Union Law” at the Free University in Berlin, “Constitutional Law” at the University of Leipzig and “Fundamental Rights Law” at the University of Bielefeld. His latest articles include “Making Systemic Risk Assessments Work: How the DSA Creates a Virtuous Loop to Address the Societal Harms of Content Moderation” and “Beyond Automation: Machine Learning-Based Systems and Human Behavior in the Personalization Economy”, which was published in the Stanford Technology Law Review. Niklas is currently finalising his PhD in the doctoral programme "Unity and Difference in the European Legal Area" at Humboldt University and the University of Leipzig. His latest presentations include “Systemic Risk Assessments in Content Moderation” at Yale Law School, “Conceptualising Content Moderation” at Humboldt University Berlin and “How AI creates a deterministic world” at the European University Institute in Florence. Niklas holds an LL.M. degree from King’s College London, a Maîtrise en Droit from Université Paris 2 and a law degree from Humboldt University.

Research Interests 

• Human rights approaches to machine-learning based systems
• The interplay of regional regulation and corporate social responsibility
• Systemic risk assessments and auditing of online platforms

Teaching

• Technology, Democracy and Society

Selected Publications 

• Eder, N., “Making Systemic Risk Assessments Work: How the DSA Creates a Virtuous Loop to Address the Societal Harms of Content Moderation”, June 26, 2023, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4491365.
• Eder, N.,“Assessing the Systemic Risks of Curation”, May 2023, in Kettemann, Matthias C.; Schulz, Wolfgang (eds.) (2023): Platform://Democracy – Perspectives on Platform Power, Public Values and the Potential of Social Media Councils. Hamburg: Verlag Hans-Bredow-Institut. Available at https://doi.org/10.21241/ssoar.86524,
• Eder, N., “Beyond Automation: Machine-Learning Based Systems and Human Behavior in the Personalization Economy“, 25 STANFORD TECHNOLOGY LAW REVIEW 1 (2021), 1-54. Available at: https://law.stanford.edu/publications/beyond-automation-machine-learning-based-systems-and-human-behavior-in-the-personalization-economy/.
• Eder, N., “What it takes to make the Oversight Board a Success - How to Build Normative Legitimacy Through Legal Reasoning”, 2021 (3) REthinking: Law 56.
• Eder, N., “Privacy, Non-Discrimination and Equal Treatment — Developing Conceptual Clarity in Face of Behavioural Profiling“ in: Ebers/Cantero Gamito (Edts.), Algorithmic Governance and Governance of Algorithms - Legal and Ethical Challenges, Springer 2020, 23-48. Available at: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-50559-2.