Missing Link: How Meta, Google, X & Co. threaten journalism and democracy
Large online platforms have developed into harmful power centers on the Internet, media scientists complain. They should be liable for third-party content.
(Image: chanonnat srisura/Shutterstock.com)
The broadsides fired by Elon Musk on his platform X against leading European politicians from the center-left spectrum have triggered a renewed debate about the effects and regulation of so-called social networks and other large online portals. The latest low point in the targeted disrespect from the richest person in the world: on New Year's Eve, he called German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) an "anti-democratic tyrant" and linked it to: "Shame on him".
The expected responses from the local democratic camp were not long in coming: SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf MĂĽtzenich accused Musk of having crossed "a border between friendly states". CDU leader Friedrich Merz criticized the statements made by the tech billionaire and Donald Trump advisor as "offensive". Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Greens declared that the attacks were "logical and systematic": they were aimed at weakening Europe. Previously, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), for example, had also gotten his comeuppance.
However, the collective outrage is only likely to fuel Musk's greed for global attention. The serial company founder has long been acting as a state within a state and a pioneer of an "extreme right-wing international" with open support from the AfD, for example, in his new role as chief bureaucratizer at the side of US President-elect Trump. Musk should just ask his AI Grok. It says: "If you consider Germany's past, you should definitely not vote for the AfD". Thorsten Benner, Director of the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), therefore demands: "If you want to attack Musk, then target his business interests: strive for effective regulation of X, organize a consumer boycott against Tesla and rely on massive investments to reduce European dependence on Starlink."
Hunger Games: the destruction of journalism
This is grist to the mill for Cologne-based media scientist Martin Andree. In an impulse paper for the SPD-affiliated Friedrich Ebert Foundation entitled "The Hunger Games" on the "destruction" of the free press, he ranges from the effects of digital monopolies on journalism and democracy to the call for a tougher approach to large online platforms. According to him, social media providers should no longer benefit from the exemption from liability for third-party content that they transmit and earn money from without paying for it.
Andrees' thesis: Digital platforms were once celebrated as tools for more participation. However, they have developed into the central power authorities of the internet – and thus into the opposite of an electronic agora. The attention-seeking business models of Facebook, Instagram, Google along with YouTube, TikTok, X & Co. promoted extreme positions. At the same time, monopolization in the digital world is depriving traditional editorial media of their economic basis. Far-reaching political and regulatory measures are therefore necessary.
A bit of theory can't hurt in this all-round attack. Andree writes: "The media have always been the foundation of our democracy – They create the public sphere and the cement of common understanding that holds our society together." That's true. Mass media in particular have long been regarded as the most important mediator of reality. Above all, they are ascribed crucial socialization, criticism and control functions. The talk of the "fourth estate" seems a bit hackneyed. In any case, the ability to criticize is based on the most complete information and clarification possible about situations, facts and problem areas. It is the task of the media to create this transparency.
The free web is over
Thanks to the advance of Web 2.0, the ideal image of the democratic public sphere was to be improved and citizen participation increased, says the author of the book "Big Tech muss weg!", looking back on the euphoric days of net culture. "But the downside of this development has become apparent in recent years," he concludes. "The digital public sphere is controlled by a few monopolists. To maximize attention, they use algorithms that even reward hatred, malice and agitation – and thus reinforce the polarization of our society." In addition, X is now openly "misused for political instrumentalization" by its owner Musk. Alleged Twitter revolutions have failed.
"Through network effects, proprietary standards, killer acquisitions and the abuse of dominant market positions, the digital corporations have succeeded in abolishing the free web," Andree concludes. Collateral damage: Editorial media are at risk.
"In the media industry, there is unrest and even panic in many places due to dwindling sales and the collapse of analog business models," he says. Publishers are trying by all means to increase digital subscriptions. Various initiatives developed new visions for digital journalism, with ideas for strategic cooperation between competitors, the development of a Spotify for journalism and new formats such as deep journalism. However, almost all of these approaches suffer from the fact that "they have no chance under the conditions of digital monopolies". Metaphorically speaking, the tech companies controlled the digital rail network. The press has "no real access to the digital tracks".
Mirage of digital diversity
"Scientific measurements", which Andree carried out together with Timo Thomsen for his "Atlas of the digital world" published in 2020, prove, according to him: "The digital diversity of many millions of domains and apps is a mirage. In reality, most of the traffic goes to monopolistic platforms." The top positions are occupied by "YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google and so on". In contrast, "the rest of the internet appears to be a gigantic wasteland" with hardly any traffic.
According to the analysis, 71.8 percent of the time spent by German web users is spent on the largest 100 platforms. Spiegel.de – is one of the "strongest" German-language journalistic offerings – has a "net reach of an impressive 49 percent of the German population". However, the sobering usage time is only 18 minutes – "not per day, but per month". This is "tiny" compared to the network performers.
In digital moving images, public broadcasters achieve a share of usage time of around 4 percent on their domains, Andree paints a picture of the plight. The share in analog television was 48 percent. In a purely digital world, the entire dual system – including the private broadcasters – would be so insignificant in relative terms that it would hardly have any social relevance.
Control over content and advertising
"Fair and free competition has been completely abolished in most digital markets," says the researcher, explaining the situation. He compares a social network to a department store, into which customers "can only get deeper and deeper, and where the exits are marked with obstacles". Furthermore, unlike editorial media, social media operators do not pay fees and use "user-generated content". "Ironically, we have additionally rewarded this advantage of the platform in terms of regulation", the author is annoyed, "by exempting them from disseminator liability".
According to Andree, this problem is not solved by the basic EU platform law, the Digital Services Act (DSA). The usual "notice and takedown" mechanisms would continue to apply. Criminal content is therefore "reported to the operator, who then checks it and blocks it in the event of an infringement". This process takes so much time "that the discursive damage in the fast-moving digital public sphere has long since occurred by the time the content is removed". Big tech also massively favors itself and locks users into its services. At least the EU is now preventing such restrictions on competition with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) for "gatekeepers".
The outlook of the marketing expert, who has his own company specializing in AI applications and data analysis, is not rosy either: by 2029, the share of digital advertising investments will rise to over 63%. In Western countries, the three largest digital monopolies – Alphabet, Meta and Amazon – already account for between 80 and 90 percent of total digital advertising revenue. In addition, the dominant platforms have control over the display of content. They reduce visibility through filtering, warnings, the deletion of posts and profiles or reach throttling, for example. On the other hand, they could use recommendation algorithms to push content to the top. The idea that the platforms are supposedly "neutral" is misleading.
Section 230 CDA comes into play
Andree asks what will happen "if our media reality in a few years' time is mainly supported" by the supposed intermediaries. His answer: "Many constitutional requirements would be undermined". These include principles such as provider diversity and independence from the state, as well as the difficult control framework for press and broadcasting, which is supported by state media authorities and various commissions. Media should also never be dominated by the interests of specific groups. In the digital sphere, however, "entire media genres are controlled by individual tech giants", leaving them "at the mercy of their private commercial interests".
The academic also considers the distinction between intermediaries and traditional media to be misleading in terms of media economics, as both generate their profits through advertising. Platforms offer users content, for example in a feed, which they monetize through advertising. They should therefore undoubtedly be classified as content providers, not intermediaries. Andree complains: "Because our definitions are flawed and misleading, we have built the regulation of digital media for our society on sand."
From now on, a different principle must apply on the internet, the researcher argues for a reversal of liability: "Anyone who assumes economic responsibility for specific content (through monetization) must also assume full responsibility for the content." In the EU, liability privileges for intermediaries and providers can be found in the E-Commerce Directive, while in the USA they are primarily found in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA). The latter is even regarded as a fundamental standard for freedom of expression on the internet worldwide. It protects platforms from being sued for harmful content that users publish on their sites. The section also gives operators far-reaching options for filtering and deleting content without being held liable.
Slaughtering sacred cows
In recent years, the US government has made attempts to reformulate the clause, especially under Trump. With Musk at his side, however, the old-new president is unlikely to touch it. In the spring, leading Republicans and Democrats tried with a bill that would have repealed Section 230 within 18 months. During this time, Congress was supposed to work out a new liability framework and thus also curb big tech power. The provision had helped to pave the way for social media and the modern internet, the masterminds argued. Meanwhile, however, its usefulness had "outlived its usefulness". But the initiative came to nothing. Civil rights organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also opposed it, arguing that the project was based on "a series of false assumptions and fundamental misunderstandings".
According to Andree, it is time to slaughter such sacred cows. The liability approach he prefers for large platforms solves the problem that they continue to make money "undisturbed under the pretext of freedom of expression", even with criminal content. At the same time, however, freedom of expression itself is not affected by this, "because it is not the transmission, but only the monetization of criminal content that is prevented".
Other proposals in the paper include simplifying links to content outside the platforms and enforcing full interoperability and open standards. Thanks to the latter, the market for emails, for example, is still characterized by diversity – messages can be exchanged between different providers without any problems. In addition, the tried and tested separation of transmission channel and content should also apply to digital media. YouTube, for example, would then have to be divided into platform and content services. Operators should also be obliged to allow third-party providers "until provider diversity is guaranteed". Such rules would not only shift traffic. They would also "quickly have a civilizing and balancing effect on digital discourse".
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Crisis in disinformation research
These regulatory approaches are worth considering. But they are probably ill-timed. The EU Commission is likely to think several times about whether it will introduce further laws to curb Big Tech or whether it will effectively enforce existing laws against US companies. Will it be able to afford to sanction Musk for "deliberately destroying a well-functioning system to combat disinformation and illegal and violent content" after the Twitter purchase, as media researcher Matthias Kettemann puts it? Such a move is unlikely to spur talks on avoiding the trade tariffs threatened by Trump.
Furthermore, commentators identified a "crisis in the field of disinformation research" in the journal Misinformation Review in October. For "almost a decade", misinformation and fake news had been a key issue for political elites, non-profit organizations and the media, they wrote. Despite this, "it sometimes feels that the field has come no closer to answering fundamental questions about the real consequences of disinformation, such as its impact on elections or its links to extremism and radicalization."
Trump's first victory in 2016 and the Brexit decision prompted "pro-government groups on both sides of the Atlantic to search for an explanation", Politico explains. They soon found the culprits in social media. But with the second sweep, there is no longer any great mystery, media ethicist Kelly McBride explained to the online magazine: "No one was tricked into voting for Donald Trump." According to the article, the polarization once portrayed as a global crisis emanating from platforms "now appears to be more a product of the highly idiosyncratic political and media culture in the US".
Stubborn stereotypes
Does this make regulation, the promotion of media literacy, fact-checking, online moderation and pre-bunking unnecessary? The Science Media Center (SMC) maintains that in the current situation with multiple crises and heated online discussions, the question remains as to what influence social media in particular could have on the election campaign and the actual polls. Even if the general consensus is that disinformation only manipulates people to a limited extent, it does have certain effects.
Leipzig-based communications researcher Christian Hoffmann points out that it is often the press and radio that really cause the problem. He considers the strong effects of disinformation to be rather unlikely "unless journalistic media repeatedly give it a very wide reach". Only a minority of citizens consume fake news to any significant extent – "and often quite deliberately to reinforce their own world view". This is where disinformation can "have a mobilizing and, under certain conditions, radicalizing effect".
People usually evaluate political statements against the background of their individual preferences, confirms Bochum-based internet researcher Josephine Schmitt. "For example, they tend to believe conspiracy narratives that correspond to their political views." Alice Marwick from the Data & Society research institute sees the challenges in large, persistent and stereotypical stories that are repeatedly regurgitated. She cites examples such as the criminality of migrants and the slander that US Vice President Kamala Harris "slept her way to the top". Many recipients want to believe such narratives because, according to them, that is how the world works.
Patent remedies therefore remain rare. However, many are likely to subscribe to a minimal approach put forward by Tübingen media scientist Sonja Utz. She would like to see – if it could be implemented with foresight – a ban on "a single person buying an established platform and destroying it".
(vza)
