Brave new online world

Social media shapes public debate, sways elections, and frames how we see the world. While some demand tighter regulation, others push for less. An interdisciplinary team is investigating how the EU is governing the digital public space – and pushing for stronger diversity measures along the way.

• Powerful platforms: The digital public space and communication within it are dominated by platforms such as Google, YouTube, X and TikTok. The Digital Services Act and other EU legislation regulate various aspects of the digital world, such as data protection and copyright protection.
• New rules for the digital space: An interdisciplinary Max Planck research group is analysing the current structures and regulations of the digital public space, whilst also examining the distribution of power.
• Need for greater diversity: There is a need, particularly on social media, for greater diversity and for decentralised, democratically organised platforms, so that the power of profit-driven actors can be reduced.

Text: Michaela Hutterer

This small open-air spot devoted solely to debate has been a feature of London life for over 150 years. Tucked into the northeastern corner of Hyde Park and easily reached by Tube or bus, Speaker’s Corner offers a haven for all kinds of discussion – religious, political, or otherwise. Only one topic is said to be off-limits: the royal family. People gather here most Sundays to seek out public debate, to argue their case, or simply just to listen in for a moment. It’s not all that different from the spaces we now access through our phones, tablets, or computers. Since the early 2000s, platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and others have opened up new discussion spaces for mutual exchange that transcend national boundaries. These digital forums are omnipresent and always available –  and in Germany, they’re officially open to anyone aged 13 and up.

What we comment on, what we share, what we claim, what we correct – it all matters. Nothing vanishes into the void on social media, where platforms can use technology to steer our debates. The time we spend online has long been a currency, and our attention is the core of a business model that benefits a handful of tech companies and their owners. In the age of the attention economy, they control access to this digital public space –  and they also set the rules.

“That digital public spaces are almost entirely in private hands poses enormous challenges for politics, society and the law,” says Erik Tuchtfeld of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. “On physical public spaces, the state has an obligation to protect and uphold fundamental rights that are essential to political discourse – like freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.” In the digital realm, by contrast, structures have emerged in which the state can only influence the protection of fundamental and human rights indirectly – yet still tries to hold platform operators accountable.

EU Digital Services: too strict or not strict enough?

The Digital Services Act (DSA) – a law some have described as a kind of constitution for the internet – has been in effect across the EU for a year. But the legislation is not without controversy. Some had hoped for stricter accountability for the major platforms, while others complain that the expanded obligation to delete content paves the way for online “censorship.” “This EU law clarifies the details, but not the fundamental question of how the digital public space should be structured,” says Tuchtfeld. How much state involvement, how much oversight, how much market power, and what kind of debate culture do Europeans want in the digital realm?

Tuchtfeld is keen to find answers to these questions. His proposal to launch a research group dedicated to this goal was supported not only by the Director of his institute, European and international law expert Armin von Bogdandy, but also by two other Directors: competition law specialist Josef Drexl of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, and social scientist and computer scientist Iyad Rahwan of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. The proposal was successful.

At Humanet3, a research group now home to four interdisciplinary scholars, the team is working together across disciplines. They ask: what’s happening right now – technically and socially? How is the law responding? What effects is it having? And where there are no rules, what kinds of regulation would make sense? They are analyzing the current state of play, identifying problem areas, uncovering regulatory gaps, assessing concentrations (and absences) of power, and exploring possible solutions. “Each of us brings their own expertise: public law, for instance, helps us think about fundamental rights, as well as the role and purpose of legislation and public oversight.” Just as essential is competition law, which is fundamentally concerned with private power and market dynamics. “And we draw on computational social science to better understand how current developments in artificial intelligence are transforming the digital space,” explains Tuchtfeld. In short, the group is tackling nothing less than the future design of digital public spaces.

Users hardly have any say

But before redesign comes analysis: what kinds of phenomena are users encountering and what rules apply in the digital space? “After the Electronic Commerce Directive in 2000, there was a stretch of around 15 years with little legislative activity – until the General Data Protection Regulation in 2016 triggered a wave of reforms,” says Tuchtfeld, pointing to at least eight separate EU laws that have been passed since 2016 to help shape the digital public space. They range from data protection and copyright law to platform regulation, forming a legal framework for the digital world – depending on which aspect is being addressed. “The EU is pursuing a human-centered approach to the digital transformation,” the researcher explains, referring to the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade, a political commitment adopted in December 2022. The focus, he says, is on protecting society and its members in the digital public space.

Tuchtfeld analyzes the form and principles of European regulation: “The EU fundamentally shapes the architecture of the digital public space, but it also indirectly stabilizes the power of private actors as main governors of that space. At the same time, it creates more freedom for users – for instance, by requiring platforms to be more transparent and to promote greater diversity. But the EU also exerts control over users through the platforms themselves. For example, European law requires platforms to deploy upload filters that monitor user content for certain features, delete unlawful material, and prevent specific violations from occurring in the first place.” The gray zone in online debate – what’s often described as “awful, but lawful” – content which is still legally permitted, but has a harmful impact on discussions. Regulating this space is left to the platforms. “A handful of powerful individuals – for example, Elon Musk as the owner of X, and Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook and Instagram – are unilaterally making decisions about our digital public spaces, and in some cases arbitrarily,” Tuchtfeld notes. And users? They have no say. This lack of legitimacy, combined with the concentration of power, is one of the main difficulties when it comes to shaping digital public spaces. “We need structures of democratic self-governance by users – frameworks that can flesh out legal norms and create room for their own decision-making, but that remain independent of the state,” says Tuchtfeld. In Germany, there are already models for this – such as public broadcasting councils and professional chambers in which members have voting rights.

Simply creating more competition is not enough

Germán Johannsen of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Munich is exploring a different angle. As a competition law expert, he studies the power dynamics within the social media ecosystem and is well aware of calls to break up Big Tech and to increase – or reduce – regulation. But his approach lies elsewhere: he asks whether European competition law might offer an alternative pathway for regulation. The key word is distributive justice. “A society in which no one holds excessive economic power ensures that no private actor can, for example, control a nation’s political agenda,” says Johannsen. What’s needed above all, he argues, is more choice – more alternatives for people using social media.

So is it simply a matter of creating new providers? Johannsen is skeptical. “To avoid replacing today’s tech giants with other large, centralized companies, we should be creating incentives for decentralized governance models to emerge within the social media ecosystem.” One example is the decentralized microblogging network Mastodon. But having a regulatory framework in place that effectively guarantees a level playing field is essential. The crucial factor is interoperability between platforms – making it possible to exchange the kinds of data that every social media user agrees to share upon signing up and that providers continue collecting with every visit: friendships, likes, comments, interests and more. “Some major platforms don’t just dominate markets for certain products – they also control data, individual media outlets, and in some cases even parts of the telecommunications infrastructure. On top of that, they’re key players in the race to develop generative artificial intelligence.”

Johannsen sees the greatest challenge in overcoming entrenched neoliberal beliefs that shape competition law and economic policy. Under EU competition law, the concentration of power is not in itself considered harmful –  only its abuse. “When abuse of power occurs, the legal instruments in place have proven slow and ineffective,” says the expert. In his view, new EU laws such as the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act do place limits on the power of major platforms. But they do not amount to a paradigm shift that fully takes account of the role digital public spaces play in enabling free expression and public debate. Even regulated platforms still have significant means of influencing public discourse and the legislative agenda – and of obstructing research in the field. In this regard, further investigation is needed.

Addressing the underlying problems

Anna Sophia Tiedeke, a legal scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, takes an even more fundamental view of the digital space. She asks, “Is the digital transformation really confronting us with entirely new challenges?” In her view, much of the discussion about how to regulate the digital public space is simply a reprise of debates already conducted – and more thoroughly explored – in the analog world. Amid the pressure of real – or at least perceived – threats to spaces that support democratic discourse, people are quick to call for solutions. But too little attention is paid to the question of whether these supposed solutions actually can, or do, address the underlying problems.

One example, Tiedeke argues, is the renewed turn in public debate toward ideas like Habermas’s theory of the ideal speech situation. In a deliberative democracy, this theory represents the ideal: a space in which participants are free from structural constraints and biases and can exchange rational arguments on equal footing. According to Tiedeke, however, this conjures an idealized state that is impossible to achieve in reality – making it a false solution, especially when applied to digital public spaces.

We already live in a world where the analog and digital spaces are closely intertwined. People navigating the physical world use Google Maps to find their way, while sharing platforms have reshaped how we navigate and use public space. Even the speakers at Hyde Park have their debates filmed and uploaded to YouTube and other platforms, opening them up to a broader audience and extending the reach of physical public space – both across distance and over time. “These two realms are intertwined,” says Tiedeke, “so any solution has to take that entanglement into account – including the architecture, the conditions of access, and the possibilities for participation.” She studies fundamental questions about how institutions interact in the digital public space – such as states, international organizations, platform companies, and private self-regulatory bodies like Meta’s Oversight Board – and how their systems of rules relate to one another. She examines how international human rights standards are shifting within this landscape and what the consequences of these shifts are: not only for our understanding of public space, but also for how we see ourselves as participants in it.

Time for new models and initiatives

Chaewon Yun, also a member of the group, explores the digital public sphere from her base at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) from the perspective of human–technology interaction. She combines approaches from the social sciences with computational methods – a field known as computational social science. She uses empirical methods such as online experiments, natural language processing, and network analysis of EU legislation to examine the role of human beings in the digital transformation – and what it actually means to call that transformation human-centered, particularly when it comes to the development of artificial intelligence. “While political declarations –  and even the AI Act – often refer to ‘human-centered artificial intelligence,’ the actual meaning of the term remains vague and contested,” says Yun.

Yun spent several years developing AI for a technology company and understands the role it plays in shaping debate on social media – a space that has been transformed by algorithms, content curation, chatbots, and generative AI. Many see the coarsening of digital communication as a structural, systemic risk – one that is built into the very nature of interaction in the digital public sphere when private actors are able to steer discourse through technology.

The Max Planck team shared its ideas and insights at a workshop in mid-February, bringing together researchers and practitioners. One thing they know for certain: regulation alone won’t solve the problem. Even though the European Commission is using the legal instruments at its disposal to take action against violations. Several proceedings are currently underway against Meta, X, and TikTok under the Digital Services Act – on charges ranging from endangering minors and allowing illegal content to interfering with the integrity of elections. But results aren’t expected for another year or two. “This is more like a patch for a broken system,” says Erik Tuchtfeld. What’s needed, he argues, is a greater variety of digital public spaces – alternative platforms whose technical and organizational design prevents the concentration of power, for example through decentralization and interoperability. The Fediverse offers some examples: researchers and science enthusiasts are already active on Mastodon, while Bluesky is also beginning to gain traction.

Tempting croissants or healthy wholegrain bread

“The momentum for new models and initiatives has never been greater,” says Erik Tuchtfeld. “Many people are dissatisfied with how things work on commercial platforms – but despite that, they keep using them.” This might have to do with scale and ease of use. Most alternatives are less flashy and offer fewer technical features. They’re a bit like healthy wholegrain bread sitting next to a croissant on the breakfast table – less tempting, but better for you. There’s no doubt it’s the healthier choice, especially for daily consumption. “The comparison’s not perfect,” Tuchtfeld concedes. “There are plenty of people who would say these particular croissants are addictive and harmful –  more like crack.” For the health of public discourse – and for democracy itself – there’s no question that the digital space needs more diversity.

The text first appeared in the 1/2025 issue of our MaxPlanckResearch science magazine and has been revised for the online version.