With a theme series on the brand-new permanent House Committee on Digital Affairs, Data&Privacyweb deepens the areas in which the House Committee is active. Various experts share their views on issues of digitization. The second topic the committee will focus on is "Digital Citizenship and Democracy. In this opinion piece, we let Dr. Tom Dobber, Mr. Paddy Leerssen and Prof. Natali Helberger of the University of Amsterdam talk about the concentrated power of online platforms in the digital public space and why that is worrying from a democratic point of view.
Although the dust has not yet settled, the election campaign is well over. Many political parties used the major online platforms Facebook and Google. Not that they had much choice: after all, covid-19 made it difficult for parties to get on the soapbox. The money that parties did not spend on roses, flyers and campaign buses ended up in the pockets of the online platforms.
Fortunately, the election seems to have gone off without any major incidents. That was far from a given. As recently as October, the Chamber expressed concerns about foreign interference, and called for transparency in the online campaign. Thereupon, political parties and the (major) online platforms (Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Tiktok) jointly signed a code of conduct on online political advertising.
But what stands out? The very first thing political parties commit to in the code of conduct is: "to strictly adhere to the advertising policies and mechanisms of online platforms (...)." The political parties let the online platforms determine what are acceptable forms of political advertising. In the absence of regulation, it is the platforms' guidelines that determine how political parties communicate with their constituents online.
The European Union is also increasingly outsourcing government tasks to powerful platforms. In the Digital Services Act (DSA) recently presented by the European Commission, our lawmakers leave it up to the platforms to determine when political ads pose a "systemic risk" to elections and public debate. Moreover, those very large platforms then decide for themselves how to deal with those risks. Although the European Commission may make suggestions, the initiative lies with the platforms, who decide what they will and will not allow.
Facebook and Google are settling deeper and deeper into the power structures of our society. Increasingly, they set the rules and "lawmakers" just have to abide by them. By allowing and even promoting this, legislators confirm that the platforms are the new creators and enforcers of our online public sphere. That seems like the opposite world to us.
Of course, we are talking about a complex ecosystem of commercial interests and platforms that have no democratic accountability to begin with. Given the technological complexity, knowledge sharing and alignment with the platforms is also necessary. But the reality is that these American companies shape our digital public sphere, facilitate our political processes, and increasingly set the rules.
That users of Facebook and Google contribute to societal problems by widely sharing harmful content such as misinformation and hate speech everyone knows, which is why the platforms curate their services extensively. But it's time to create policies that recognize that Facebook and Google are political players themselves. And that those platforms, through their influence on policy, can themselves become a social problem if we don't become more critical. Right now, we are increasingly allowing Facebook and Google to dictate the ground rules of digital democracy. That is unacceptable.
Thus, political parties are increasingly dependent on the platforms to spread their message. Just like the press, which needs the platforms to reach their readers. A small change to the algorithm and local media lose sales. A recent change in the Facebook algorithm already caused the free posts of political parties to virtually stop reaching users. As a result, political parties now had to buy ads to reach voters.
This does not mean that the platforms are deliberately abusing their power, or that they only contribute negatively to democracy. But the existence of so much concentrated economic and political power is worrisome from a democratic point of view.
Instead, our government should be a counterforce to platforms, not their umpteenth client. This requires that politicians dare to set their own policies, even on controversial issues such as election campaigns, rather than letting Facebook and Google call the shots. In the long run, countervailing power also means cultivating alternatives before our digital public sphere becomes completely owned by profit-hungry global monopolies. Science, journalism and civil society, supported by government, have an important role to play here.
The Chamber warned of foreign interference. That turned out to be justified. Only this time the danger came not from Moscow, but from Silicon Valley.
