UCD’s Prof Susan Leavy and colleagues make the case for an indigenous social media ecosystem to counter the dominance of US Big Tech.
As the battle over Trump’s tariffs gains momentum, two currents in tech governance are coming head-to-head.
On one side, many of Silicon Valley’s tech platforms feel a new freedom to operate without regulatory oversight.
Elon Musk’s X was a forerunner: its Machine Ethics, Transparency and Accountability team was disbanded when Musk took over in 2022. Hate speech on X has rapidly increased over this time, and complaints have skyrocketed.
This year, Meta followed suit, announcing the suspension of its fact-checking programme.
An alliance is emerging between US tech giants and the US president. The president will ward off attempts to regulate tech companies; the tech billionaires will promote the president’s ideology and bankroll his political campaigns. An entirely new techno-political coalition is emerging in US policymaking.
Meanwhile, in Europe new laws are coming into force to regulate the operations of tech companies. The EU has recently enacted two wide-ranging laws governing social media platforms and online marketplaces: the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act.
The Digital Services Act has a particular focus on “systemic risks to society”, including the dissemination of disinformation and effects on “democratic processes and civil discourse. These laws, and the values they promote, stand in fairly clear opposition to the hands-off, libertarian ideology that is emerging in the US.
US tech leaders are calling on Trump to intervene with regulator countries. Zuckerberg was particularly explicit, suggesting that US policy should be to “defend” the interests of tech companies against EU regulation.
In a recent memorandum, Trump clearly stated his intention to confront foreign tech regulators, most particularly the EU, indicating the potential imposition of tariffs unless the EU backpedals on regulation.
How can Europe defend its values and markets in this context?
We suggest the primary aim for European tech should be to promote the development of a new social media infrastructure that complies natively with the new laws. The platforms involved should be interoperable, supporting the free movement of users and data between platforms, thus creating a properly free market for platforms to compete in.
Social media ad spending in Europe was estimated at €23bn in 2023. Locally owned social media companies would obtain large revenues. They would also create new European jobs.
A European social media ecosystem could offer a better deal to users. On current social media platforms users quickly become locked in, and unable to move to a different platform. Platforms don’t have to be set up that way. They can be set up to be interoperable; a new generation of European social media systems could certainly be required to take this extra step.
A second raw deal for current social media users relates to the data that platforms gather about their online behaviour. The problem is that users have limited information about how platforms use this data, and no choice about its uses. The Digital Markets Act remedies these problems.
Designing platforms that comply with law is far easier than retroactively modifying platforms to effect compliance. Google claimed to have devoted “hundreds of years of human time” to complying with the EU’s GDPR law. New platforms, if well designed, can avoid this retrospective compliance burden.
How can Europe foster such an ecosystem?
Social media platforms are a fundamental part of life for many people; they are not something that can easily be given up.
Sanctions and fines on noncompliant social media platforms would foster movement; when X was banned in Brazil last year, large numbers of users moved immediately to Bluesky. However, these are draconian actions and could only form part of the plan.
Given that a local ecosystem of social media platforms would be of great value to European governments and citizens, we believe there are very good reasons for governments to assist with start-up investment.
One option would be a new European programme that competitively awards grants to companies whose social media products most effectively and innovatively implement rule compliance and interoperability. The programme could support several new companies with grants of this kind while they compete for market share.
The European Space Agency is a good example. This ambitious long-term initiative was set up with a clear mission (European space capability) and a clear goal (European technological security/autonomy). It was founded rapidly, in response to a perceived new threat (the Sputnik programme). It awards contracts to competing companies.
The US’s aggressive new fusion of tech and politics provides a strong impetus for Europe to create an alternative social media infrastructure, comprising platforms that natively comply with its new rules.
Economically, it would allow a larger portion of tax revenue to remain onshore. Socially, it would make it easier to study the effects of platform algorithms on society. And platform interoperability would restore choice to consumers and create a genuinely competitive social media market.
This is an abridged version of a paper published by the Forum on Information and Democracy as part of its insights series, a collaborative platform to explore new ideas on information ecosystems.
Susan Leavy is an assistant professor in the School of Information and Communication at University College Dublin (UCD) and at the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics. She is one of Ireland’s nominees to the OECD Global Partnership on AI (OECD-GPAI) where she co-leads its social media governance project within the responsible AI working group and is a member of Irish Government’s AI Advisory Council.
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