Last Thursday, former US President Barack Obama spoke at a meeting on the challenges posed to democracy by digital information, organized by the Cyber Policy Center, a research organization linked to Stanford University. While acknowledging the innovative and emancipatory role that can be played by online platforms, Obama argued that contemporary infodemic risks, against all his promises of democratizing society and information, of translating into its opposite. Also due to actors who deliberately intend to exploit its intrinsic criticalities.
Among these actors, there are not only “companies that have come to dominate the internet in general and social media platforms in particular”, which make “decisions that, intentionally or not, have made democracies more vulnerable”, but also ” political consultants’ or ‘foreign powers’ who can’ exploit platform algorithms instrumentally or artificially increase the reach of deceptive or harmful messages’.
As examples of the distorting use of social networks and online information with effects on the polarization of the political debate in the realities concerned, Obama explicitly cited, among others, the use of social networks made by Trump supporters and the disinformation campaigns mentioned above. Russia is accused in several countries.
The former president is not new to this type of speeches on the subject: a few days earlier, at the University of Chicago, he affirmed the need for “regulatory measures and industrial standards” that allow private platforms to do business while preventing , practices “potentially harmful to society”.
In recent years, the US debate on the link between information, social networks and democracy has taken on accents that, for a long time, in the common American mentality, have seemed excessive, ending up leading to the somewhat philosophical discussion on how to find the right middle between the guaranteeing freedom of speech and information and limiting attacks on democracy by those who promote disinformation by taking advantage of this very freedom, that is, by altering those decision-making and consensus-producing mechanisms that are the basis of Western democracies.
Also on the basis of this new awareness, also fueled by cases such as that of Cambridge Analytica, which led to Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing in Parliament, the US Congress is currently discussing a series of reforms that aim to attribute greater responsibilities and limits to online platforms, especially giants such as Meta, Google and Twitter, introducing stricter rules on privacy, to protect citizens, and competition, to prevent an economic monopoly from turning into a political weapon.
Above all, even in the United States the idea that platforms are responsible for the content published through them is increasingly gaining ground, and that they are responsible for moderation and verification (for example for the news or comments published). .
A vision that has long been considered purely European, but which could soon become dominant on the other side of the Atlantic as well, since it is increasingly discussed to update the Communications Decency Act, dating back to 1996, by modifying those sections that guarantee ample freedom to platforms, relieving them of responsibility for the content posted by users.
The European Union, unlike the United States, has been following the prospect of a limitation of platforms for longer, both in terms of accumulating political weight and responsibility for content. In recent years, the European Parliament has worked on several occasions on disinformation campaigns organized in various member countries by non-EU powers, in order to influence public opinion by spreading visions most congenial to them on certain strategic issues or by feeding news false that favored the parties considered in some way closest to them.
In March, Parliament approved the report of the INGE special commission on foreign interference in the democratic processes of the Union and its member states: it underlines how online platforms have often been used by external states to spread disinformation.
For this reason, the INGE commission asked for “European legislation that guarantees significantly greater transparency, monitoring and accountability with regard to the operations conducted by online platforms”, as well as a series of measures to “oblige platforms, especially those that present a systemic risk to society, to do their part to reduce the manipulation and interference of information “.
Moreover, the Digital Services Act, recently approved in its final version by the Council of the European Union, also moves in the direction of greater involvement of platforms in the fight against disinformation, which for example provides for various limits to user profiling and various obligations. in the matter of transparency on content moderation, as well as the possibility for the European Commission to adopt measures towards platforms that contribute to the online dissemination of false news.
“The DSA is an important step for internet security at European level, because it focuses onaccountability of platforms, providing a series of useful tools to fight fake news and ensuring users the opportunity to challenge the action of the platforms “, says Maria Giovanna Sessa, Senior Researcher of EU DisinfoLab, a think tank which analyzes the mechanisms of dissemination of disinformation in the European Union and the policy contrast.
A basic optimism also shared by several MEPs, such as Brando Benifei, head of delegation of the Democratic Party, who defines the DSA “a good text, which finally guarantees power and protection to citizens and consumers”, emphasizing how “more stringent on the transparency of algorithms “as well as” a clearer procedure than notice & action where users will have the power to report illegal content online, such as hate speech or the revenge pornand online platforms will have to act quickly ».
According to Sessa, however, a limitation of the Digital Services Act is represented by its only concern the platforms with more than 45 million users, while “even the minor ones deserve attention and further regulatory interventions: in recent years, in fact, several extremist and conspiratorial communities they migrated to them precisely because they were perceived as less rigid on the moderation of content ».
A decisive point of the regulation of the platforms, in fact, is to avoid as much as possible the so-called “bubble effect”, that is, the dynamics for which one is exposed to information sources that confirm one’s beliefs, however erroneous they may be. «Although the bubble effect has in a certain sense always existed, platforms have exasperated this trend», continues Maria Giovanna Sessa: «Many algorithms are based on the continuous personalization of contents, distorting the perception of how widespread and shared a theme is. This reinforces the tendency to reject positions in conflict with one’s own preconceived thinking, dragging the user into a vicious circle that is difficult to break ».
It is clear that the prospect of giving more responsibility to platforms raises some problematic issues with regard to monitoring the application of the rules. On a political and more deeply cultural level, however, the fact that this vision has been pursued for some time by European institutions highlights the awareness of how, today, protecting freedom of speech and information also means acting against its abuses.
An apparent conflict between two demands of democracy, however necessary for its protection, similar to how the defense of the democratic order requires the repression of the forces that question it.
In this sense, it is significant that even in the US area, traditionally inclined to an extended interpretation of the concept of free speech, we are starting to move in this direction, following the European example in the way of declining the response to the risks for the democracy caused by some uses of online platforms.
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