The authors Thomas Hess, Julian Nida-Rümelin, Jan Schillmöller and Andreas Wenninger shed light on how changes in democracy and changes in the digital sector interact with each other in their guest article “Social media and their significance for freedom of opinion” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The focus is on the USA, which has experienced a shift to the right in recent years, led by actors such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk, both politically and in social media.
In order to avoid similar developments in the EU, the Digital Service Act (DSA) provides a legal framework that aims to make social media more accountable. Together with freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of broadcasting, it should help to ensure that citizens continue to have the opportunity to obtain factual and reliable information from digital media. The authors explain that while traditional media are subject to various control bodies, all users can disseminate content on social media. This brings with it regulatory problems, which are exacerbated by the fact that the major platform operators are not based in Europe and may also represent different values. At the moment, the platforms are mainly controlled with the help of community notes. However, they run the risk of merely reproducing the political and ideological mainstream of the users.
Another key challenge in the regulation of content is the definition of legal and social undesirability. For example, the question arises as to where the boundary between fact and opinion lies:
But there is also a very fundamental epistemological objection: the naïve distinction between facts and opinions cannot be maintained. […] Rather, there is a continuum from uncertain and insufficiently substantiated opinions to better substantiated, very well, perhaps even scientifically substantiated convictions to individual empirical findings that are difficult to refute.
According to the authors, factual claims defined as untrue should be excluded from freedom of expression, but this only happens as long as they do not themselves become the basis or prerequisite for an expression of opinion. The DSA stipulates that service providers must take action against “illegal content” on the platforms. However, each member state decides for itself what constitutes illegal content – in Germany, for example, untrue statements of fact are not always covered by this regulation.
According to the authors, social media not only harbours the risk of one-sided reporting and disinformation, but also provides a platform for hate speech and can directly damage democracy by influencing elections.
In order to ensure an improved exchange of opinions, the authors propose three measures for dealing with social media:
- A definition of new regulations specific to social media.
- Changes in the practice of self-regulation by platforms.
- More transparency in algorithmic filtering and content moderation.
To the article (in German)
Prof. Dr. Thomas Hess
Member of bidt's Board of Directors | Director of the Institute for Digital Management and New Media, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Julian Nida-Rümelin
Member of bidt's Board of Directors, Professor emeritus of Philosophy and Political Theory | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich
