A) Introduction

In recent decades, the rapid proliferation of virtual platforms and social networks has fundamentally transformed the landscape of crime and deviance. Platform-based cyber criminal activities — that is, crimes and deviations that exploit digital platforms as instruments or environments for their commission — are increasing not only in volume and variety, but also differ substantially from traditional offenses in terms of structure, actors, and social consequences. These crimes transcend geographical boundaries, create complex causal chains among platforms, users, and victims, and frequently occupy the grey zone between crime, deviance, and commercial conduct. The transnational nature of these offenses and the multi-layered structure of host platforms have created serious challenges for jurisdictional authority, criminal attribution, and the enforcement of judicial decisions. What further complicates this challenge is the economic power and political influence of transnational platform corporations, which frequently contest the capacity of national governments to exercise judicial sovereignty. Despite this, criminal policy scholarship has predominantly focused on the technical and criminological dimensions of this phenomenon, neglecting the ideological-structural analysis of criminal policy models in response to it. This theoretical neglect assumes particular significance at a time when major ideological shifts from neoliberalism to post-neoliberalism are underway and states are searching for new strategies to regulate the digital space, thereby reinforcing the necessity and urgency of the present study.

B) Research Objectives

The primary objective of this study is to analyze and compare the criminal policy characteristics of four liberal paradigms —classical liberalism, modern liberalism, neoliberalism, and post-neoliberalism— in response to platform-based virtual criminal activities. The study seeks to demonstrate what approach each of these ideologies adopts with respect to crime prevention, criminalization, punitive and non-punitive responses, the role of the state and society, and the treatment of deviance in the virtual platform environment. Furthermore, the study aims to show how the distinct philosophical foundations of these ideologies —from the primacy of individual liberty in classical liberalism to the emphasis on distributive justice in post-neoliberalism— lead to divergent and at times contradictory policy strategies. The secondary objective is to identify points of convergence and divergence among these approaches and to critically evaluate each paradigm's capacity to address the complexities of this domain, thereby laying the groundwork for constructive dialogue among competing models and facilitating the development of more effective criminal policy frameworks.

C) Research Methodology

This study adopts a qualitative approach and employs a descriptive-analytical method. Data were collected through a systematic review of library sources, including books, peer-reviewed articles, legal documents, and authoritative policy reports in the fields of criminal policy, criminology, and political theory. The analytical framework was designed around six comparative axes: crime prevention and non-punitive responses, criminalization and punitive responses, communal responses, state responses, responses to crime, and responses to deviance. These axes were developed drawing on comparative criminal policy literature and enable the systematic measurement of ideological differences at the level of operational strategies. Each paradigm was first analyzed independently on the basis of primary theoretical sources, and similarities and differences among them were subsequently extracted through structured comparative analysis.

D) Research Findings

The findings reveal that classical liberalism, grounded in the principle of minimal state intervention, restricts criminalization to overt violations of individual rights, situates prevention within the sphere of individual responsibility, and regards punishment as an instrument of rational deterrence. Within this paradigm, deviant behavior in virtual platform spaces is treated as a private matter, the state assumes a minimal regulatory role, and the responsibility for protecting users rests essentially with the users themselves. Modern liberalism, accepting a more active role for the welfare state, prioritizes social prevention, balances criminalization with guarantees of fundamental user rights, and favors rehabilitative and restorative responses over purely retributive punishment; within this framework, platforms are obligated to comply with human rights standards and remain accountable to public institutions, and democratic oversight of their conduct is regarded as essential. Neoliberalism subordinates criminal policy to the logic of economic efficiency, favors platform self-regulation, regards punitive mechanisms as amenable to private-sector outsourcing, and substitutes situational prevention through market mechanisms for direct state intervention; the consequence of this approach is the transfer of regulatory power from public institutions to technology corporations and, as a result, the weakening of democratic accountability. Post-neoliberalism, by contrast, treats digital territorial sovereignty as a foundational principle, deems the criminalization of structural platform abuses essential, rejects the privatization of criminal justice as an undermining of the rule of law, and places victim compensation alongside punishment at the center of its policy agenda; this approach also places particular emphasis on the participation of affected groups in criminal policy-making processes.

E) Conclusion

The comparative analysis of the four liberal paradigms demonstrates that, despite sharing common liberal foundations, these approaches offer distinct and at times contradictory strategies for addressing platform-based cybercrimes. None of these models is free from structural weaknesses: classical liberalism lacks adequate regulatory instruments; neoliberalism reduces justice to a commodity; modern liberalism grapples with unresolved tensions between liberty and digital security; and post-neoliberalism risks sliding toward digital authoritarianism under the guise of territorial sovereignty. These structural contradictions reveal that platform-based cybercrimes constitute a phenomenon that exceeds the analytical capacity of any single ideology and requires an intersubjective and multidimensional approach. Accordingly, designing an effective criminal policy in response to these offenses requires moving beyond ideologically pure frameworks, drawing on the strengths of each approach, and engaging in critical and constructive dialogue among these competing models.