Platforms’ Accountability to Strengthen the Digital Public Sphere

27 May 2026 | 16:00 - 17:30 CEST | Alcide De Gasperi | |
Consolidated programme 2026

Proposals: #6, (#8), #12, #13, #20, #25c, #29, #32, (#33), #35, #36, #38, #39, #41, #56, #59

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Session teaser

Digital platforms hold immense power over public debate, but their engagement-driven designs—amplified by generative AI and synthetic media—often reduce users to passive consumers of algorithmically curated content, eroding civic agency and fueling disinformation, hate speech, and other harms. Against this backdrop, and building on frameworks like the DSA, Council of Europe’s Recommendation on Online Safety, and foundational texts such as the Rome Declaration on Media Ecology and Cannes Declaration on the Sovereignty of Mind, this session will explore: How can we reshape platform governance to empower users as active citizens—not just audiences—in the digital public sphere? Join us to unpack the legal, governance, and practical conditions needed to safeguard democratic debate in platform-mediated environments.

Session description

Digital platforms wield unprecedented power in shaping public debate. The way they are designed and operated significantly affects the digital public sphere.

The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) recognises platforms’ systemic risks to democratic processes, civic discourse, and fundamental rights. More recently the Council of Europe Recommendation on online safety and the empowerment of users and content creators lays a common ground for human-rights based platform accountability frameworks, featuring prominently promotion and protection of user agency.

Yet engagement-driven architectures, further amplified by generative AI and synthetic media, continue to fuel disinformation, hate speech and crime, and other online harms, eroding the conditions for civic agency and reducing users to consumers of algorithmically curated content. Moreover, algorithms and AI are reshaping human cognition and autonomy. These challenges are addressed in foundational texts like the Rome Declaration on Media Ecology and Technology Diplomacy, the Cannes Declaration on the Sovereignty of Mind, and the Declaration Universelle des Droits de l’Esprit Humain.

Against this backdrop, this session brings together civil society, academia, public authorities, and platform actors, to explore what conditions are needed for users to participate in the digital public sphere as citizens rather than as audiences. The discussion will address the legal, governance, and practical dimensions of safeguarding democratic debate in platform-mediated environments, against the background of European regulatory frameworks.

Guiding Questions

From Consumers to Citizens: How can we redesign platform architectures to prioritize civic agency over engagement metrics?
The DSA and Council of Europe frameworks emphasize user empowerment, but how can we move beyond regulatory compliance to ensure platforms actively foster democratic debate—not just consumption? What concrete mechanisms (e.g., algorithmic transparency, participatory design, or civic moderation) could shift users from passive audiences to active citizens?
Algorithms and Autonomy: What safeguards are needed to protect cognitive sovereignty in an AI-driven public sphere?
Generative AI and synthetic media are reshaping how we think, debate, and form opinions. Drawing from the Rome Declaration on Media Ecology and Cannes Declaration on the Sovereignty of Mind, how can we ensure that digital environments respect human autonomy, critical thinking, and pluralism—rather than exploiting cognitive vulnerabilities for profit or manipulation?
Governance in Action: How can multi-stakeholder collaboration turn regulatory ideals into platform realities?
The DSA and Council of Europe provide legal foundations, but implementation requires cooperation between civil society, platforms, and public authorities. What role should each actor play in co-creating accountability frameworks that balance innovation with fundamental rights? How can we bridge the gap between high-level principles (e.g., user empowerment, transparency) and the technical, day-to-day operations of platforms?

Format

Please try out new interactive formats. EuroDIG is about dialogue not about statements, presentations and speeches.

People

Programme Committee member(s)

Milica Vesović, Programme Manager in the Digital Development Unit, Directorate of Security, Integrity and Rule of Law at the Council of Europe
Minda Moreira, Internet Rights and Principles Coalition (IRPC)
Yrjö Länsipuro, ISOC Finland

The Programme Committee (PC) supports the programme planning process throughout the year and works closely with the Secretariat. Members of the PC give advice on the topics, cluster the proposals and assist session organisers in their work. They also ensure that session principles are followed and monitor the complete programme to avoid repetition. 1-2 PC members have signed up to each session and will compile the messages.

Co Focal Points

Dorijn Boogaard, Netherlands IGF Coordinator
Evangelia Vasalou, Division for cooperation on freedom of expression - Democratic Institutions and Freedoms Department, Council of Europe
Francesco Vecchi, Civic AI Coordinator - Eumans, YOUthDIG 2024

Focal Points take over the responsibility and lead of the session organisation. They work in close cooperation with the Programme Committee and the EuroDIG Secretariat and are kindly requested to follow EuroDIG’s session principles

Organising Team (Org Team)

List Org Team members here as they sign up.

Pascal Schneiders
Argyro Karanasiou, Assistant Professor in Law and Innovation at the University of Birmingham, UK
Murillo Salvador, University of Geneva, Swiss Youth IGF, Geneva chapter of the ITU's AI for Good youth community
Cesare Pitea, Legal Adviser at the Council of Europe
Milica Vesović, Programme Manager in the Digital Development Unit, Directorate of Security, Integrity and Rule of Law at the Council of Europe
Juan Miguel Aguado, Professor of Media and Journalism at the University of Murcia, Spain
Teresa García de Alcaraz Ruiz
Marta Pérez-Escolar, Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Murcia, Spain
Ilkka Räsänen, Sitra, Finnish innovation fund
Chloe McDowell, Reimagine Europa

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Key Participants

Moderator / Co-Moderators
- Chloe McDowell - Re-Imagine Europa
Speakers
- Asha Allen - Centre for Democracy and Technology
- Ilkka Rasanen - SITRA
- Cesare Pitea - Council of Europe
Key Participants from the audience
- Francesco Vecchi - Eumans
- Peter Mechels - Fedivariety

Key Participants are experts willing to provide their knowledge during a session – not necessarily on stage. Key Participants should contribute to the session planning process and keep statements short and punchy during the session. They will be selected and assigned by the Org Team, ensuring a stakeholder balanced dialogue also considering gender and geographical balance. Please provide short CV’s of the Key Participants involved in your session at the Wiki or link to another source.

Messages

Rapporteur: Murillo Salvador, University of Geneva

We consider platforms as a social digital infrastructure of democracy. Yet platforms were not designed to fulfil a civic function. Instead, they optimize engagement, e.g., through the deployment of dark patterns like infinite scrolling. They are not neutral communication and information channels: they distort the public debate by enabling the spread of disinformation. In this context, civil society acting within platform ecosystems, such as fact-checking collectives and other actors, should be supported as key partners in the digital public sphere.
We view the loss of cognitive sovereignty is an emerging risk linked to the embedding of AI into platforms. Algorithmic management, from recommendation systems to automated moderation, need to take into account democratic principles from the design stage and not as an afterthought. Provenance and verification mechanisms are crucial as AI-driven synthetic content and identities become more prominent in the digital public sphere, faster than regulations can be deployed. In this context, the deployment of AI tools themselves can go through preliminary steps of testing and sandboxing before reaching the market.
Rules do not necessarily hamper innovation. In fact, existing regulation acts as a powerful deterrent for platforms’ worst outcomes in democracies. Participants called for stronger DSA compliance, and here civil society can play a key role as partners for public authorities to make platform operators accountable with regards to the law. At the same time, CoE frameworks provide foundations to expand users’ agency, and international human rights provide an universal basis for users seeking to make platforms take action where no regulation exists.
The discussion invites us to move from consumer perspectives towards an understanding of digital citizenship as embedded in platforms. Platform design is a fluid outcome of choices. New business and engagement models should be incentivised, such as community-driven platforms that already exist and perform a civic function. At the same time, alternative forms of democratic engagement should be supported, outside of platforms, including deliberative and multistakeholder formats.

Video record

https://youtu.be/s_OLleJAhes

Transcript

Disclaimer: This is not an official record of the session. The DiploAI system automatically generates these resources from the audiovisual recording. Resources are presented in their original format, as provided by the AI (e.g. including any spelling mistakes). The accuracy of these resources cannot be guaranteed.

The Geneva Internet Platform will provide transcript, session report and additional details shortly after the session.

Florence Ranson: So, still trying to bring some people in from the coffee break, but I think it’s still time to network, still time to chat and exchange a few cards and remarks and so on. But we’ll start, we’ll kick off, and that will make everybody get back in once they realize we have started without them. So, let’s open the final stretch of our day. And we have been discussing since yesterday, actually, the fact that trustworthiness is of the essence and accountability is a clear element of trust, of course. And that’s also part of the things that we already discussed yesterday. But we’re going to go a little more in -depth into that particular aspect. And we’re going to talk about platforms accountability, another element that was discussed yesterday.

And if you remember. It also came out quite strongly in the outcomes from the youth dig discussions that we that we summarized yesterday. So I’m sure there’s going to be much more to be discussed on that particular issue. And to lead us through that session, I’m going to hand over moderation to Chloe McDowell from Reimagine Europe. Chloe, welcome.

Chloe McDowell: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, everyone, for joining this final Eurodig session on platforms accountability. And I’m sorry to drag you away from your final coffee break. So the starting point for today’s discussion is the idea that digital platforms are no longer just channels through which public debate takes place. They’re actually part of the architecture of that debate. Their design choices shape what becomes visible, what spreads, what is rewarded. And what comes to feel credible or meaningful to us. and they also have the power to shape individual and collective cognition and autonomy and this really matters because the digital public sphere is not only a place where information circulates it’s a place where meaning is constructed and contested amplified and unfortunately sometimes distorted facts evidence and arguments are always interpreted through social emotional and cognitive frames so when we talk about platform accountability we’re not only talking about content moderation or compliance procedures we’re talking about the conditions under which people form opinions exercise judgment and fundamentally participate in democratic life and legal frameworks matter of course the dsa has created an important language around systemic risks and fundamental rights and the council of europe’s recent recommendations add a human rights foundation to the system and the dsa has created an important language around systemic risks and to this reminding us that online safety also means autonomy and participation But the deeper question is, how can we move from platforms that optimize attention and engagement to digital environments that strengthen democratic capacity?

And a point that I know will be raised during the discussion and something that we should be careful with is the idea of passive consumption. We’re not simply passive users. Our engagement and interpretation and participation are active processes. And the problem really then is whether the systems around us expand that agency or exploit and narrow it. So that is also why today’s session is not just a traditional panel. We will begin, of course, with the framing interventions from our three panelists. But the real core of the session is, of course, the open debate. So to set the scene, we’ll first hear from Ilka Rasanen, who is the EU operations lead at Citra. And Ilka will begin.

I’ll bring a somewhat provocative perspective on whether existing dominant platforms can realistically be made democratic or whether, in fact, we need stronger alternatives, including civic tech, more binding regulation. And then we will hear from Asha Allen, the Director and Secretary General of the Centre for Democracy and Technology. Asha will bring a civil society and digital rights perspective to the discussion, looking at user empowerment, human autonomy and the essential role that civil society plays in making frameworks like the DSA and AI Act work in practice. And then finally, we will hear from Cesare Pitea, a legal advisor at the Council of Europe. And Cesare will discuss the Council of Europe’s recommendation on online safety and the empowerment of users and content creators, focusing on user autonomy and platform responsibility and how accountability can be understood from the individual user up through wider governance structures.

And then after these remarks, I will invite everyone to treat this as a working session, the same as with the other sessions that took place today. And on a practical note as well, Ilka will leave. He will leave us slightly earlier at around five. So if you have any questions specifically for him, please do bring these up earlier in the debate. So thank you, Ilka.

Ilkka Räsänen: thank you chloe and thanks for the invitation to this very important event um my organization citra the finnish innovation fund is a public sector think tank and a fund in finland but we increasingly also want to contribute to european debates and safeguarding and renewing democracy is one of our strategic areas and therefore probably i’m here and mostly or maybe also because we published a recent study this year called um algorithms and democracy how does social media shape the world view of young europeans i will quote some figures from that study but i won’t focus on that i’d rather focus maybe on the guiding questions that have been given to the session too while as i won’t be talking about that i’ll just go ahead and start with chloe and then i’ll just go ahead and I may not stay on that script, but maybe talk a bit besides the questions, but on the broad topic of the questions as we go along here.

But I wanted to start with the four things, four things we know that form the context of this conversation today. The first thing we know is that democracy is in decline, globally speaking. If you look at the well -known indicators, for example, from the Institute of Gothenburg University, we’re back to the 70s in terms of population who lives in democratic societies versus autocratic societies. In autocratic societies, you have more than 70 percent of global population lives in autocracies, and that’s increasing year by year. Second thing we know is that social media has become a major force. In our lives, also in terms of how we spend our time. in this study that I mentioned we did a survey in three European countries actually Finland, France and Romania among younger Europeans from 18 to 28 years old and asked about their social media use and one of the questions was how many hours per day in average you use social media and the answers were very similar across the countries actually surprisingly similar but the average is close to six hours a day it’s quite staggering if you allow for some time sometimes sleeping in a day say eight hours you have you know 16 hours a day and then almost six hours of that is 37 percent of your awake in time is on social media and that was the respondents themselves who said that and typically you kind of underplay your vices when you answer such surveys so it’s a lot of time.

That was the second thing. Third thing we know from Eurobarometer studies for example that For this age group and maybe also others, social media is these days the main source of news, main source of political and social questions. It’s not print. It’s not linear TV. It’s social media. And then the fourth thing we know, social media platforms, the dominant ones, they’re not designed for democratic debates. They’re not designed for civic discourse. They are designed and optimized for engagement, and they’re designed and optimized, if you put it a bit more brutally, to be slightly addictive to their businesses, their big, very profitable businesses. I actually checked for this debate, the latest available financial information from some of the big platforms or the companies behind the Meta and Google Meta’s revenue in Q1.

I actually checked for this debate, the latest available financial information from some of the big platforms or the companies behind the Meta and Google Meta’s revenue in Q1. I actually checked for this debate, the latest available financial information from some of the big platforms or the companies behind the Meta and Google Meta’s revenue in Q1. I actually checked for this debate, the latest available financial information from some of the big platforms or the companies behind the Meta and Google Meta’s revenue in Q1. I actually checked for this debate, the latest available financial information from some of the big platforms or the companies behind the Meta and Google Meta’s revenue in Q1. I actually checked for this debate, the latest available financial information from some of the big platforms or the companies behind the Meta and Google Meta’s revenue in Q1.

I actually checked for this debate, the latest available financial information from some of the big platforms or the companies behind the Meta and Google Meta’s revenue in Q1. I actually checked for this debate, the latest available financial information from some of the big platforms or the companies behind the Meta and Google Meta’s revenue in Q1. Alphabet, Google’s mother company, $109 billion revenue in one quarter, $62 billion in profit in the same quarter. So big and profitable. Why am I saying this? I am not personally anti -capitalist. I think we need companies, big and small, to generate jobs and well -being and generate tax revenue, etc. But I’m saying this to say that these companies are doing extremely, extremely well.

They don’t have an incentive to change. Which brings me to the first guiding questions on how should we bring these platforms to act such that we move beyond regulatory compliance to platforms fostering democratic debate. Well, I would… submit that we first need to ensure the regulatory compliance before we talk about anything else. And here in the European Union, the regulation with the teeth, the Digital Services Act, is still quite young. It’s only a couple of years ago that it entered into force with all of its provisions. And so far, the Commission has imposed only one noncompliance fine against X, actually, on lack of transparency on several things, including that blue mark not being explained properly, etc.

And of course, X challenges this decision to the General Court of the European Union. It will take several years. The fine was $120 million, which in the empire of Elon Musk is unconsequential. It’s less than peanuts. So one of the points I’d like to make is that that we have those regulatory tools, but they should have real dissuasive deterrence behind them as well. So I don’t know that there would be, besides these regulatory sticks, any carrots that would be big enough for changing the behavior of this company because they’re doing so well in what they’re intended to do. Therefore, I think rather than speaking how those platforms should change their behavior, we should talk about alternatives to those platforms.

First of all, social media platforms, alternative social media platforms. There are some attempts out there, have been and are, W social media, Blue Sky, etc. Good luck to them. I don’t know if they will fare well in this. I don’t know if they will fare well in this competition, but at least… I think public authorities should somehow also show example and move some of their communications, maybe in parallel, and give them credence and visibility, etc. They will not succeed unless big institutions, public and private, move onto those platforms. Then the second set of alternatives is not the social media platforms themselves, but alternative means to engage in democratic processes that go beyond elections. So all forms of participatory democracy, citizens’ panels, initiatives, etc., etc., and I think the European Union has done an excellent job in launching those things.

It’s difficult to reach people, but they’re being good. Good initiatives and attempts. What is an interesting field where we’re also working quite a lot is so -called civic tech, which is a… platforms that are designed from the ground up for engaging people in democratic decision -making. They reach broader audiences than physical panels and deliberative formats of decision -making. So you can combine these two, maybe in hybrid forms, try to make it enough exciting, link it to actual decision -making, et cetera, and you provide an alternative, which we all need, and I would say younger generations especially need in order to be engaged, have agency, and have sense of ownership of their democracy, and that is that we need to work on, and maybe that way also that cognitive sovereignty or sovereignty of the mind can be reached when there’s engaged in platforms and means that are not the current ones.

I think I’ll just stop there. Looking at the time and pass it over to the next speaker.

Chloe McDowell: yes so wonderful thank you and thank you for starting us off on such a positive note as well i think uh sometimes that’s easy to it’s easy to diagnose the problem and maybe not look at the solution so uh thank you for that and uh definitely the point on better enforcement i think leads really well into uh what ash is going to to say about the role of civil society so i’ll uh i’ll leave the floor

Asha Allen: thank you uh and thank you so much for the invitation it’s it’s wonderful to be here i remember my first uh conference like this but i won’t say how many years ago it was um because then i will be on my age um so before i get started with my uh intervention i actually wanted to ask the audience a question um how many of us in the room remember growing up without social media or online platforms and how many of us grew up with social media platforms as just part of our okay so it’s good to know hi everyone um so i wanted to make that differentiation um because platforms are and always have been fluid the manner in which we see platforms engage now what their business models are now have not been set in stone since the beginning i vividly remember i entered into this policy space over 10 years ago now here in brussels and i vividly remember the power of communities using twitter as it was at the time for movements like me too like the black lives matter movement for raising awareness on disability and accessibility rights user preference at the time that was informing how platforms engaged with their users actually generated civic exchange it’s why we talk about platforms being the online democratic space there was there has and has been a very clear paradigm shift you so when we’re thinking about how we’re going to address the first question which is about platform design and moving users from passive consumption to active participation I want to kind of question the question itself because there has been active participation that has led to systemic change and there may even be a business reason or a business impetus to conceptualize the notion of passive consumption and how companies are seeing users as they are right now and so I think when you think about how the business models now that are focused on being engagement based and having the highest level of engagement we’ve seen from some documents that have been released in the US through litigation in terms of the business prioritization of keeping people on the platforms how this is intrinsically in contra to increasing democratic debate and active participation.

so mindful of time we could talk about this quite quite extensively but i want to move to what the dsa tries to do right because there are many jurisdictions not just the european union brazil india other countries have many different frameworks that they’ve put in place that have been informed by or influenced by the the digital services act and it actually tries to embed what was already there before right prior to having very hard concrete regulation what we had was an ecosystem a kind of co -regulatory regulatory ecosystem informed by the existing international human rights standards right so civil society like cdt europe and our sister organization cdt in the us could use the un guiding principles on businesses and human rights to say well actually yes there’s no regulatory framework but you have a legal obligation under international human rights norms to make sure that your products and services are not harming people or not harming society or not harming civic participation you so when you look at the dsa and the model of the dsa it actually tries to capture that right so it has very clear hard rules for illegal content it’s illegal there’s a judicial order you have to act expeditiously to to do something but it also recognizes that if you’re a company of a certain size like the ones that you looked into their their profit margins uh earlier today they have an extra due diligence responsibility um to ensure that because of their reach in the european union that they are not infringing on fundamental rights that are captured in the charter now the dsa is content agnostic rightly so it does not regulate content because we have to preserve freedom of expression and freedom of association which are the foundations of democratic and civic debate but it does say you need to assess as you mentioned before the risk that you might pose to civic participation and many other risks and you have to mitigate that risk and we’re going to hold you to account if you do not have a right to do that and we’re going to hold you to account if you don’t mitigate that risk now what we have is a regulatory framework that needs enforcement and enforcement takes time so yes we have the one decision on on x but essentially what the european commission has to do is to take clear scientific findings and turn and translate those into you know legally grounded and sound decisions in which they can hold these platforms to account and and that takes uh time but i think the other aspect is being able to socialize the rights that all of you now have now that we have the dsa in place right so even if a piece of content is not illegal but you think it violates a platform’s policies you can flag that content and say i think this is in violation of your policies and if the company doesn’t agree with you well you can take that now to an out of court dispute settlement body to say actually i’m going to push you on that and it’s up to the company to actually pay for that process it’s not on you There are other means in which you can access this transparency on the takedowns of different pieces of content.

And there’s supposed to be more algorithmic transparency, access to data for vetted researchers. So the provisions are there, but the companies are certainly pushing back on making sure that access is there. So what we need right now is this movement building to be able to have folks like you in the room and others to be able to use the rights that they now have. That’s embedded in the Digital Services Act. And it allows me to come to the third prompting question that we had around the co -regulatory framework, because the DSA tries to capture this, too. Now, I might be slightly biased because I’m a head of a civil society organisation, but I don’t think the DSA can fundamentally work without civil society participation in its enforcement.

Right. It’s civil society organisations who are doing the research. They’re building the evidence base. They are the trusted flaggers. They’re the ones alerting the enforcers to say there’s smoke over there. There might also be a fire. You need to go and have a look at what that fire might be. And that’s actually captured in the DSA itself. I’m also a bit of an EU law nerd. And the EU DSA actually mentions civil society more than any other regulation. That’s not actually addressed about civil society, which is pretty interesting. But that’s deliberate because they rely on civil society as these kind of co -regulatory accountability actors to be able to help with enforcement, but also to hold the enforcement bodies themselves to account to prevent any kind of any overreach.

There’s also provisions that companies should also be consulting with civil society organisations and researchers when they’re doing their assessments. But it might surprise you to know that that hasn’t been used and companies are not engaging with civil society organisations and researchers right now. But the provisions are there and we hope to make use of those. So this allows me to come to this debate and this question that we have about regulatory frameworks kind of diminishing what platforms can do. Clearly, they are still making their profit margins. Clearly, many of us in the room are still using these platforms and making the most of these platforms. So this idea that regulation is hampering innovation or hampering users engaging with platforms is just simply not true.

It’s also quite a false dichotomy and doesn’t make any business sense. You can’t be a company and think to yourself, I want to roll out a service or a product to users, but I might hurt those users. People will eventually stop using your product and your services. So from a business sense, it’s not quite clear. But quite essentially, there’s a simple fact that if you’re operating within the single market, operating within any community, there have to be rules and safeguards in place to make sure the rights that we all have embedded and bestowed to us by the International Human Rights, its framework and by the European Charter are respected. And those can’t be, let’s say, put a pin in them just to, you know, bolster innovation or to allow the companies to proliferate as they were.

so lastly this allows me to come into the conversation a little bit around the ai conversation because the responsibilities of platforms right now i think we’ve been having this conversation on say social media and online platforms for a while and the harms and and how they need to be mitigated but many of those same platforms are also driving the ai conversation right now they’re embedding those ai tools into the very social media platforms that we’re talking about and the very services i think many of you if you’ve used google search recently will know that you now have an ai summary before you have anything else and you can engage with that ai summary as an ai chatbot and so then i would also re -question the question around cognitive sovereignty right and this idea that our engagement is either passive or it presents a risk a kind of existential risk that can’t be mitigated because the technology is moving so fast and i think that’s a really important point and i think that’s a really important point and i think we can’t have a narrative where it’s a kind of okay to move fast and break things without respecting the rules and the rights that are in place and to have these technologies disseminated onto the market without having the evidence evidence base to know that they’re actually safe So this notion that these tools are incredibly powerful, which they can be and can be incredibly helpful for many other reasons, then shouldn’t be deployed without these frameworks in place.

And without us questioning this idea that they are inherently hugely powerful and have these this mandate that extends beyond what we are capable of being able to to question and put the rules and frameworks in place for. So when it comes to kind of platform accountability, I think we need to reshape the conversation around platform compliance with regulation, as all other industries should, and move away from platform accountability as a framework within the EU where hard regulation is in place. Embrace that kind of co -regulatory framework where due diligence is still relevant in some company areas, but also question the kind of rapid deployment of different systems and different technologies. Like AI and how they’re being embedded into different online frameworks.

without the respect for rights to move away for innovation. I think we should always fundamentally question that if we’re going to have a thriving democracy, we need to have a thriving civic space that’s safe for everybody to use. And

Chloe McDowell: Thank you, Asha. And yeah, I mean, you definitely raised my attention to several things that maybe I and other people in the room weren’t necessarily aware of before. And that’s essentially part, again, of reclaiming this autonomy is being aware of the tools that we have at our demand and what we can do as civil society to push back against the power of these big platforms. So, yeah, really inspiring. Thank you. And now we’ll have the public authority perspective from you, Cesare, and especially looking into these new Council of Europe recommendations and which I think are very interesting looking again, at the human rights side of these. recommendations and regulations and the idea of human autonomy and cognition as well.

So thank you.

Cesare Pitea: Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for having me here. This is my second Euroleague, the first as a speaker, and I come after very interesting and challenging presentations, so mine will be a little bit more institutional about this instrument that the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe just adopted last April. So before moving into that, it’s important to understand what is the perspective we as an organization come from. So the questions that we’re trying to answer or reason about today are not about technology. They’re about democracy and they’re about society. And we should always keep this in mind when we talk about digital rights, platform regulation, and all those apparently technical issues.

And this is also the approach of the recommendation. The recommendation deals mainly with online safety and online empowerment. The recommendation is number 20, 26, number 4, and it offers to the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, so well beyond the European Union member states, a shared framework and a policy compass to tackle some of the existing emergencies. And hopefully future challenges that we are and will be facing. So the recommendation makes one thing very clear that I think it’s important to underline. If we want to remain committed to the founding values of the Council of Europe, human rights, democracy and rule of law, the way forward is not to artificially oppose safety and freedoms. It is not to respond to the growing power of platforms by giving back control over the information environment to states or by weakening users’ safeguards on platforms and online.

It is rather to use the force of law and regulation to expand. Platform accountability, expand transparency around how platforms work and to require platforms environments to. effectively and genuinely enhance user agency. But how do we get there? So first of all, in line with approaches that are already there, the DSA, but also to some extent the Online Safety Act in the UK, the recommendation starts from moving the shift from content regulation to systemic responsibilities. So, of course, there is a whole section of the recommendation that calls for evidence-based proportionate limits as limits to content restrictions and stresses the importance of the principle of legality in the… what is allowed and what is not allowed online in line with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

But beyond content, the recommendation calls on states to set clear legal expectations for platforms, especially those that have significant influence over the information environment. The question is not just what contents platforms host, but how they exercise their human rights responsibilities that were mentioned earlier towards users and society at large. Platforms are therefore expected to integrate safety and human rights considerations directly into their design and their operations. This means that they have to assess and manage human rights risks. opposed by their systems, ensuring transparency around algorithms and content moderation, and taking responsibility for how they system -shape the public discourse. This is not new, but as Asha was telling before me, self -regulation has clearly failed to deliver human rights -driven platform environments, and therefore member states are encouraged to place those systemic duties under public scrutiny and under the oversight of independent regulatory authorities with effective powers.

In this framework, user empowerment is not presented as an alternative to platform regulation. It’s rather a core pillar of accountability, and platform accountability to those. the recommendation identifies four categories of empowerment duties design related duties are the first and states are called on requiring platforms to give more meaningful control to users over their online experience this cannot just be a and and here we go back to the issue of enforcement and implementation and the time and the process that is needed if any of you have tried to flag to any platform content know how difficult it is even for us people that are quite well placed to do so. And how many back and forth you have to go through before content that is actually illegal or against the terms and conditions of the platforms is removed or limited.

So this is precisely one of the most important indications. Indications, effective controls as users, we should be those who define our platform environment, not passive consumer of an environment that is there decided by other people. The second type of empowerment duties are transparency duties. Of course, transparency around algorithms, around content moderation, around monetization policies and practices. But we also know that this doesn’t work at the individual level. None of us has the time or the capacity to go through what we encounter online on a daily basis. This is why a fundamental aspect of transparency is researchers’ access. Access to data, but also access to platforms. The possibility to use platforms to carry out investigations, experiments, research.

And unfortunately, we know that on this very specific issue that is also covered by the DSA, platforms are not really going forward and rather are going backwards. And we should also ask ourselves why. The third type of research, empowerment duties are relating to threat process. So the recommendation has quite innovative provisions on notification, on content moderation, including dark patterns, including users that are affected indirectly from content moderation decisions, and also on how basically a follow -up should be there on both flagging and contestation of content moderation decisions. These include, of course, internal and external dispute settlements, but also the safeguards of ultimately direct, of users to go to court if they deem so necessary. The fourth type of empowerment duties are collective action.

This is very important because when we talk about reducing the unbalance in power, we have to recognize that civil society and organizations of civil society play a fundamental role. The imbalance is not just between the individual and the companies that provide the services, but sometimes and very often even between the state authorities, the regulators, and those companies. So it’s only by joining forces and harnessing this potential, democratic potential, of the communities of users that any of these platform accountability regulations can work. And therefore, the recommendation calls for support and recognition and affordances on platforms or, let’s say, collective forms of user action. This goes from fact -checking organizations to users’ rights organizations. One important point that I have to say initially was a little bit more promising in terms of how far this could go, is that the recommendation very, very quietly calls on member states to explore other ways of opening up platform environments.

We have discussed how the platform model has changed from a diffuse model to a top -down model where recommender system, content moderation algorithms owned by the platforms determine our experience online. We have said how us as individual users should be more able to fine -tune what we see and how we see it, but also maybe it’s time to explore how platforms should open up their systems, big platforms of course, to a plurality of recommender systems and content moderation systems for lawful content so that, for example, each user can rely on a third party to … fine -tune its experience online to its own preferences in terms of content, in terms of language, in terms of what we want to be exposed to.

As I mentioned earlier, the recommendation really supports a multi -stakeholder approach that is at the basis of EURDIC. Not only it recalls existing principles according to which rules and policies should be designed with the participation of all stakeholders by both states and platforms alike, that platforms need to involve stakeholders in the development of the content, in their design decisions. When they design the services, when they make the risk assessment, when they plan their mitigation measures, this should be done in cooperation with civil society. so this is very important and as important is as I mentioned before that the recommendation also support forms of collective action towards platforms so this is more or less what the recommendation is about but again one very important point that is at the beginning of the recommendation is that when we think about platform regulation we should so to speak look beyond and behind the screen the recommendation makes it very clear that in order to address these unbalances in powers that we find online states need to still address the structural issues and inequalities, the knowledge gaps that are out there in the real society, because those harmful things that we see online are sure probably amplified by systems, but also are a reflection and have their roots in the society around us, and the promotion and protection of human rights, human dignity and equality is still a priority beyond digital spaces.

And I finish this by inviting all of you to participate to the survey. I was supposed to screen a QR code, but you find it outside on the tables, that the Council of Europe is launching in the framework of the New Democratic Pact for Europe, where all of you can contribute to build better digital space. Thank you very much. t

Chloe McDowell: hank you very much and yeah I mean I think in particular your point that platform regulation is not in opposition to user autonomy in fact supports and helps create a more vibrant public space when users can have a say over the platforms that they use this was a really interesting intervention and with this I will open the floor to the general debate so I know as with the other sessions there’s a number of people who have asked to intervene so I will read out the names based on first come first serve basis you have two minutes per intervention and I’ll give a bit of time after calling your name but if you’re in the room please raise your hand and if you’re online the online moderator will We’ll call on you.

But if you don’t speak, I will move on to the next the next intervention. So starting with Kumhur Eir from the Brussels municipality. No. OK. Next, we have Adunga Necho Mulatu from Bahia Dar University online. No. And Adriana Rodriguez -Novo in the room. No. OK. And Julie Lubkin at the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. OK. And Francesco Vecchi, I know you’re here. Thank you. OK.

Francesco Vecchi: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, and thanks to all the speakers. I’m Francesco Vecchi, CVK coordinator at Humans, and I had the honor of being a co -facul point for this session. At Humans, we believe that democracy cannot be left to the mercy of algorithms designed for profit or surveillance. This is why, with the campaign I coordinate, we call for public interest platforms and AI, systems that prioritize civic empowerment, transparency, and accountability over extractive models, and we had the chance to discuss about that today. This is not at all about rejecting private innovation, which is paramount, but about ensuring that democracy and AI are treated as public services as they are, delivered under clear binding rules, whether by public or private actors.

Lawrence Lessig, 20 years ago, taught us that code is low. The architecture of digital platforms is regulation in its own. It shapes how we debate, decide, and even dissent. And if platforms design spaces that prioritize engagement over deliberation or vitality over truth, they’re not just hosting public discourse. They are distorting it. But accountability cannot stop at platforms. Institutions must also answer for failing to demand and fund and scale democratic alternatives. Well, thanks to ILCA, we have some good news because we know that alternatives exist. And from federated social networks such as the Fediverse to open source civic tools that we, of course, advocate for, we have the technology to build a favored digital public sphere. But what we lack is indeed the political will to adopt them at scale.

personally this is why we this is why humans civic campaign exists and why we’re supporting the european citizens action service to shape a blueprint for a techno -democracy coalition so a sort of new manifesto for a new way of democracy and in general we advocate for a new infrastructure of democracy where technology serves the people not the other way around thank you very much for listening

Chloe McDowell: thank you francesco and then uh we have uh denys nazarenko i believe i can see you online or dennis

Denys Nazarenko: yeah thank you thank you so from city ground perspective it’s a practical matter because public institution increasingly relied on digital platforms to reach residents and a particular human emergency so the operating logic of these platforms essentially is attention attention attention attention attention space has discussed and a civic responsibility to then see it’s a different point on design curve so Cities are where the consequences of their design and disinformation around elections will be experienced locally. Non -explicit hate speech affects specific neighborhoods for sure, but synthetic conduct we could monitor over recent months will target public institutions and they will erode local trust. So on a typical actions to shift user from audience to citizens, one would be the user choice of recommendation system so algorithm is something residents will configure rather than will receive.

Second one will be provenance signal for synthetic media. And last but not least, the trusted public digital channels through which residents can verify the data is official. In case of Key, we’ve done a lot of research. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key.

We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. We’ve done a lot of research on the key of the key. for the solutions that we are pursuing, the orchestration layer that will connect different platforms is missing. So initiatives like FIWARA, or the local digital twins are working in that direction. It would be great to see SAMHSA working towards that for the digital platforms for communication. Thank you

Chloe McDowell: Thank you. And actually I didn’t read out the question last time, but maybe just the header this time. So governance in action, how can multi -stakeholder collaboration turn regulatory ideals into platform realities? So the first person we have for this question is Axel Mazolo. Jaroslaw Ponder from the International Telecommunication Union. Elonal Hikok . Lilia Simonian

Lilia Simonyan: Hello, hi Yes, it’s me First of all, I want to thank all of you for your very interesting presentations Distinguished colleagues Regulatory frameworks such as the Digital Service Act and the Standards of the Council of Europe provide a strong legal foundation for a safer and more transparent digital environment However, laws alone are not enough The real challenge lies in implementation how to translate high -level principles into everyday platform practices This is where multi -stakeholder collaboration becomes essential Public authorities must set clear enforceable rules and ensure oversight but they must also remain flexible and forward -looking, adapting regulation to rapidly evolve the system and the evolving technologies At the same time, platforms carry operational responsibility. They must integrate transparency, risk assessment, and accountability directly into their systems by design, not as an afterthought.

Civil society plays a critical bridging role. It represents users’ interests, identifies real -world harms, and ensures that governance remains grounded in human rights and democratic values. Without this input, regulation risks becoming disconnected from societal needs. To make this collaboration effective, we need practical mechanisms. This includes co -regulatory frameworks, independent audits of algorithms, transparent reporting obligations, and structural control. The framework is a key part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework.

It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. It is the most important part of the regulatory framework. like transparency and user empowerment must be translated into construct tools. Clear content labeling, accessible appeal systems and understandable algorithmic explanations. My time is over. So thank you.

Chloe McDowell: Thank you so much. And we have Sandra Matigue. Hi. No? Okay. I think hopefully we’ll have some time for spontaneous interventions at the end as well. Amath Ndiaye? No. Kamel L. Hilali? No. And online? No, we don’t have the last participant online. Okay. Moving to the final question then. So what safeguards are needed to protect cognitive and behavioral health? Sovereignty in an AI -driven public sphere. Ranjan Timil… Sorry, Timilicina? No? It’s the end of the day. Everyone’s outside enjoying the sun, I think. Giacomo Mazzone from

Giacomo Mazzone: Thank you for the floor. I want to add some elements to the reflection. One is that there is a new fact that we need to consider in the picture, and these are the two sentences of the U .S. tribunals against the social platforms, social media platforms. This is a new fact that changes definitely the setting, and in fact in the last months after that, weeks after that, the attack to DSA and to European legislation are less vocal than before. So I think that this opened a window of opportunity for us. The second is, there is another perspective that we need to consider. because what we have seen until now could be even worse in the future.

The current modification to the search engines that has been produced using the AI having devastating impact on the media ecosystem and throwing the fragile business model that has been built on electronic media. This is not only an economic problem but is also producing the certification of media environment especially for local media and for in small countries and minority languages. This reduces the diversity of the offer and the quality of the cognitive ecosystem that for Europe that’s very very dangerous. And on the top of this damage we have also the fact that we are moving with the introduction of AI in our devices to a situation where users will not ask anymore to the devices they want to look for.

But the contrary will happen. AI interface will select and decide which news to submit to our attention, at least in theory based on what had been your previous selection preferences. But if we look what happened recently, we are pretty sure that there will be decisions that will be taken by the platforms and not by the users. So this just to introduce a layer of complication more in your discussion. Thank you.

Chloe McDowell: Thank you. Next, we move to Pari Esfandiari.

Pari Esfandiari: Thank you for the floor. It’s clear that the concern today is no longer just misinformation, but the gradual erosion of cognitive autonomy in digital environments optimized to predict and shape behavior. Recommendations. systems driven by engagement tend to amplify outrage, emotional reaction, and confirmation biases. Generative AI intensifies this by making persuasion scalable, personalized, and increasingly difficult to distinguish from authentic human communication. So safeguarding cognitive sovereignty requires more than content moderation or transparency tables alone. Transparency around the recommender system should go beyond technical standards to include meaningful explanation of why certain content is amplified, how recommendation systems shape visibility, and what incentives, drive these architectures. Meaningful user control also matters. Users should have greater ability to choose how content is curated, whether algorithmic personalization is used, and what kind of recommendation systems influence their information environment.

Digital literacy goes beyond identifying false information. It must help people understand how algorithmic systems shape attention, emotion, and perception over time. And finally, platform design itself is important. We should also think about designs that encourage reflection, contextualization, exposure to diverse viewpoints, and healthier form of democratic participation. Because if AI systems increasingly shape, not only what we see, but how we think and perceive reality, then democratic debate risks becoming subtly ingenious rather than generally deliberated. Thank you.

Chloe McDowell: Thank you. Moving next to Vittorio Bertola.

Vittorio Bertola: Yes. Okay. So I’m Vittorio Bertola speaking personally on this. And first of all, since the answer to the questions up there might be regulation, and I’m actually not against this, I want to note that I’m a heavy Facebook user because I’m old. And I have not noticed any kind of even minimal change in how Facebook works after the DSA came into play or came into force. So I think it’s really a matter of enforcement, but also of understanding what enforcement of this kind of regulation means. And this is a matter we need to solve before working on new regulation on new media. Because, I mean, with AI, the problem with AI of potential manipulation, not just the effects, but with AI, it’s even of emotions.

And so I think it’s really important to understand that. important. But the problem is that at least for social media, we sort of understand how social media works. At least the people that make them understand the algorithm more or less. With AI, even the people that make the AI models don’t fully understand how they work in the end. So it’s even hard to understand what we would need to ask for these companies to do to prevent this kind of manipulation. But the real problem is that we now live in a society in which most people want to be manipulated. I mean, people are actually happy to look for confirmation biases and if you talk to people, even people from political views that used to be thinking of fact and logical, now just want to find someone who gives them reason and tells them they are right and feel right and intelligent.

So I think we really need to work on the cultural people and unfortunately this is extremely different and they have no idea what to do. So thanks for raising the problem, but I have no solutions to propose. Thank you.

Chloe McDowell: And sorry, I lost my spot. Sumeja, who’s speaking?

Sumeja Huskic: Hi. Hi. events appears online, you rarely get a full picture. You mostly get what the algorithm thinks you will engage with, one angle, one emotion, one narrative, and slowly it starts to feel like that is the whole story. And that’s what worries me the most, not what we are being told what to think, but that we are slowly being shown less and less without even realizing it. So maybe the real question is, how do we make sure that in all of this, our own thinking is still free, still critical, and still truly ours? Thank you.

Chloe McDowell: Thank you so much. And then we have Andrea Mialovic. No. And Parvin Jumshudu, no. Sophie Carr in the room. No. Okay. and Lilith Yezikia nope online the next Jeremy either as well online Nikita Danilov nope Florian Russel nope and Nadia Simeon okay well what I’ll do maybe is go back give the speakers the floor to answer the questions that we’ve had and then much and then we have andrea mil me and lovic no and uh parvin jim should you know uh sophie carr in the room no okay and lilith yes yes yeah nope uh online um okay uh the next jeremy either as well online nope um mikita danilov no florian russell nope and nadia simeon okay well oh well what i’ll do maybe is uh go back give the speakers the floor to answer the questions that we’ve had and then given this we have some time for some spontaneous interventions as well s

Cesare Pitea: o yes thank you uh for the floor the contributions uh i think were very interesting they really pointed at a growing consensus about what the problem what the problems are what is the what are the possible ways to find solutions but of course then um the the big elephant in the room is how do we get there how do we ensure enforcement how do we ensure that resources are out there for regulators or civil society organizations to play the role that is necessary in order to bring platform accountability into reality. But after having a presentation, very institutional presentation, I want to ask you a question. Do how many of you think that it is fair and acceptable that a paid content pushed by a government, a foreign government, is brought to your attention?

I would also say carrying, let’s say, information or not particularly accurate or a viewpoint on current events is brought to your attention? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a bad thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? Is it a good thing to do? so you like to watch videos of people cooking and all of a sudden a platform brings on your feed a paid content pushed by a foreign government paid by a foreign government on current events that have nothing to do with food and beverages well this happened to me uh i complained about this and the platform i will not name names here said that that was perfectly okay there was no breach of uh any uh any um terms of and conditions another example is uh well as you see i spent some time trying this these things some point i see the presidents of the italian republic advertising financial services and i think that’s what i was trying to do and i think that’s what i was trying to do and i think that’s what i was trying to do and i think that’s what i was trying to do after a moment of displacement because it seemed very real I realized that this could not have been possible it took me three rounds of back and forth with the platform to convince them that this was against their own rules so there’s clearly room for improvements on what we can do and this is and I see that the commission under DSA is really taking some action in this direction the meaningful nature the user -friendly nature of of user controls is one of the keys so we do now have the instruments to make sure that we cannot rely on us individually to go after you know to spend you know I did it because I had an interest you know intellectual professional interest to do that but people have lives to live and luckily so so They don’t go after, they can’t spend hours, you know, quarreling with the platform about their own terms and conditions.

They should know what their own terms and conditions are, not the user. The user should be able to flag it in simple terms. So this is evidence of something that is more structural, and these things need to be addressed.

Asha Allen: Thank you for all of the interventions that were really, really interesting. And I’m going to try and address only a few of them because there were quite a few. But I want to reiterate that public interest platforms do exist, right? I think many of us, especially in my time at university, which was many years ago, was told not to use Wikipedia for my references. Wikipedia still uses a community -based model for its content moderation and its platform, right? You have other platforms that are emerging, Mastodon and others. There are models that are there. Yeah, right. I think in terms of the narrative in which there are just dominant platforms. dominant platforms that we are only engaging in and there aren’t other models that could be invested in i think you know there are there but there is a need for more and i i think we can we can agree there um to come back to the reflections about the rules in place and enforcement rules have always accompanied innovation particularly in on this continent right back to the industrial revolution you don’t have the industrial revolution without there then being some sort of harm and then rules being put in place you’re in belgium where there’s some pretty strong unions here i think there’s a long history of kind of rules going uh aligned with um innovation so this isn’t anything new right and the argument that somehow rules are hampering innovation also isn’t new but we’ve also been able to overcome them for many other industries so i think we should always be mindful of that in particular now the last thing i want to want to focus on is that kind of why enforcement takes as long as it does but what you can actually do in the meantime right so So every decision that the European Commission has made, we’ve had one definitive decision on X under the DSA, but we’ve had requests for information, preliminary findings.

There’s a whole long process under the DSA. And every stage, the companies have sued or gone to court. There isn’t a moment where they’re not going to court to push back on elements of enforcement. Right. There isn’t a moment, for example, when the DSA came into force that all of a sudden public publicly available APIs for researchers were completely removed or suddenly you had to pay 45000 euros to be able to access those. Right. The pushback to compliance was there from the very beginning. But the enforcement bodies need to do what they need to do under the arm of the legal framework that they have. They need to make sure that their cases are watertight so that they don’t end up in front of the Europeans.

And then have a reversal in their decisions, because then everything under their enforcement arm is going to be questioned even further. So that’s one thing. However. the DSA and other regulatory frameworks and agreements provide other means, right? So private enforcement under the DSA exists. I will call out an incredible organization, Bits of Freedom, based in the Netherlands, who took Meta to court for not implementing the user empowerment tools on their platform, right? And they won and Meta appealed and they still won. So in the Netherlands, this tiny, you know, tiny but mighty civil society organization took on one of the biggest platforms and they won because they had the legal basis under the law. And it means in the Netherlands, users now have greater control under the DSA for what they’re engaging with when they’re on Facebook.

Now, unfortunately, that’s only in the Netherlands because that’s where the case is. But that’s inspiration for other areas, right? There are over 30 ,000 people who have used the out -of -court dispute settlement bodies already. And the out -of -court dispute settlement bodies also have transparency reports that show you the decisions that were reversed, how effective that they have been. There’s also this massive transparency library on statement of reasons. You don’t have to go through it. It’s something like five billion reasons. No one has time to go through that. However, you can probe it. And they are thinking about frameworks for you to be able to probe it in a much more efficient way. So it’s not just a case of relying on the enforcement bodies who would legally have the mandate to hold these companies to account.

And they are increasingly being bold. Right. The preliminary findings from the European Commission that TikTok’s entire platform and the infinite scroll is addictive design is actually quite huge. Right. Because it fundamentally questions whether a huge feature of that platform is compliant with mitigating risks of mental well -being, protection of minors and other fundamental rights harms. So we have to see where that takes us. But there are other tools that we can use in the meantime. So I actually think there’s a bit of a question. We hear about our enforcement bodies, the European Commission, others being able to bet. better convey, better communicate what you have at your disposal and how you can have these rights at your disposal.

And to be able to let you know that there are organizations like CDT, Bits of Freedom, a bunch of others who are all working for users empowerment, so actually taking these questions to court, who are publishing the evidence that’s needed for the investigations and who are interested in engaging with impacted communities. So there are multiple avenues. I think it’s just about making sure everybody knows what those avenues are.

Chloe McDowell: Wonderful. Once again, thank you for raising these points and at the risk of running a little bit over time. I know there’s two hands there and here as well. One online. So we’ll try and get through those and then wrap up the final messages of the session. So the two ladies there.

On-site participant: It’s not working. Hello, my name is Jaska and I’m a part of YouthDig and I wanted to speak to the value of regulation to force accountability in strengthening the digital public sphere My generation was a generation of unregulated social media but however, we’ve experienced the first hand the harm that this has caused us and our peers I aspire to be a part of a new movement a multi -stakeholder movement that will create the framework for a safer digital world We will instead become the generation of regulation This regulation, more specifically, needs to be safety by design Establishing guardrails and fences will not allow unsafe platforms to rule any future childhoods Regulation is a mechanism to realign markets with human rights It creates a level playing field in the digital world through clear enforceable standards In regulating platforms, we will establish the models of decency, care and humanity that we grant one another in the real world, in the digital space.

Article 28 of the Digital Services Act is the primary instrument in implementing this concept of safety by design. Under Article 28, all platforms must take appropriate and proportionate measures to protect the safety, security and privacy of miners. Safety by design must not just be a concept applied as an afterthought, but instead a guiding ethos that platforms fundamental designs. By regulating platforms with safety by design, we will change the narrative. We will shape platforms to shape our mutual future. A future where trust, safety, rights, protection and economic value are not trade -offs, but mutually reinforcing drivers of a healthy digital ecosystem. Children should not be shaped by morals and designs. Children should be shaped by morals and designs, not by platforms’ profit aspirations.

Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Inej Ruki. I’m also a youth digger, and I’m attending both events, Youth Dig and Eurodig, as a .pt fellow. And I wanted to make a note on the last topic of this conversation, which was on cognitive sovereignty, and especially in relation with generative AI and how young people are relating with chatbots, especially building relationships that they sometimes think are closer to personal relationships than what they really are. And I would say even in more dangerous cases, resorting to AI. chatbots as therapists, which I think is something that is really, really concerning. And I do believe that we need programs to counter that. And we also need these platforms to be stronger in allowing these people to find the help that they need instead of trying to keep people engaged in these platforms.

And so I do think we still have a path to take in this sense. Thank you.

Chloe McDowell: Thank you both. And we have another. Oh, we’ll go online and then back to you there. Peter, can you go?

Online participant: Okay. Hi there. Thank you. I’m Peter Rechels from Freddy Variety. We are an European collective of digital activism researchers actually promoting open source software. We studied actually the Freddy Variety integration public administration. We have this case on the EDPS and… their very first pilot project. I can tell you that no regulation alone will safeguard a democratic debate, that’s for sure. You know, it all depends on a collective, collaborative and coordinated effort as we just learned here. What Europe really needs is a social stack, a sovereign digital infrastructure built on the values we already share, digital autonomy, decentralization, diverse ownership, editorial pluralism, and algorithms treated as institutions that serve the public interests, like broadcasts and libraries.

The vision on this is actually already converging across the Fediverse, Eurosky, and private messaging ecosystems. The technology works, the EDPS pilot there that I referred to on the Fediverse proved that already. We at Fediveriety, we studied it. So this is no longer a technical question, it’s political choice. The math actually is simple. If you redirect even a modest share of public digital spending towards open alternatives, and you sustain local developers, break foreign dependency, and recirculate the billions Europe generates in social media back into European hands, then, you know, no single platform or protocol can match the scale of big tech alone here. But an ecosystem that can do that, shared infrastructure, open protocols, small builders, empowered to innovate, users free to move.

That’s why I look forward to something like the DC Etic as a coordination framework to sustainability fund the critical open source infrastructure that the European social stack actually demands. The tools exist. The political will is what is missing here. Thank you

Chloe McDowell: Thank you and over to you

On-site participant: Thank you very much my name is Adam Lam I am a representative with the Advisory Council on Youth in the Council of Europe and I’m also a youth digger here at the event I wanted to build on what Asha was saying about platforms large platforms, social media platforms being based on this passive engagement model as a core business and a profit driven algorithm I appreciate what Federico brought in about the alternative platforms that do exist that are more community driven and may have more public interests in mind but the core addictive element to the engagement based algorithms means that users are also more likely to stick to that because of that very addiction so I’m wondering what further provisions can be done to prevent addictive design specifically under the current EU regulations, but also the Digital Fairness Act and where do you guys see the opportunities to regulate addictive design and to what extent can we have this democratic governance or participation in the development of private algorithms because this is, again, maybe proprietary intellectual property, but how can we have community engagement or civic engagement in the development of this and the changing of these larger platforms and can the DFA have real power in that and maybe if there’s examples, Cesare, from the Council of Europe, if there’s any good principles to build on there or things that could be taken into account by the EU and drawn on from that.

Asha Allen: great i’m happy to go first uh and i’ll try and be brief there was a couple of great points uh that were made and thank you so much for the intervention i’ll start with the um intervention on kind of the the european stack right and this idea um that we should build our own infrastructure and i think there’s going to be a lot of um investment in that the current negotiations on the next multi -financial framework um is happening right now and i know that’s at the core of that too one thing that we always kind of convey as part of this discussion is that if we’re going to do this and build this new infrastructure and build different um opportunities and and choices for users and and communities it has to be grounded in the charter of fundamental rights but we also have to recognize that not everybody in the european union has been able to enjoy their fundamental rights and human rights right these are still ideals that we are pushing for there are a lot of communities who experience harm in the european union and so what this cannot be framed by is actually a kind of of competitive race to catch up or to be embedded in this wider geopolitical conversation that’s going to lead this to push for heavy investment in infrastructure that we’re not entirely aware of what those risks may be we’ve seen very clear cases of public authorities using systems that they did not know how they worked and it led to actual harm you have the benefit scandal in the netherlands where people were were mistakenly saying that they were fraudulently claiming benefits you had the post office case in the uk and many others but this i think also leads to the point on ai and that was made just here and also connects to the other point in regards to not under the companies themselves not understanding these systems i would also challenge that a little bit that notion that they don’t know the systems that they are developing they have the means to kind of sandbox test their their innovations right and actually that’s at the core of elements of the ai act it takes an entirely risk -based approach and if you’re also going to deploy an AI system under the DSA you have to assess and mitigate the potential risks of it before it’s deployed right and so we’re very lucky to have an AI governance lab in our US office with brilliant technologists who pose these precise questions how do you test an AI for specific harms and there are means to do it so I think we should just push back against the notion that something should be deployed on the market especially in the public sector before this testing has been done.

Then the last thing I’ll say about the addictive design I agree it’s going to be at the heart of the digital fairness act conversations because the DSA is actually quite ambiguous in what it says in regards to safety by design and addictive design this is also why I think the TikTok case is so important in regards to what the commission has actually said in their initial decisions. One thing I will say, though, is I personally think and again, I might be slightly biased. I’ve been working on the DSA since before the DSA was the DSA. So it’s somewhat etched into my brain at this point. I think Article 40 might be one of the most powerful things in the DSA.

And that’s data access for vetted researchers. Right. And I know the Council of Europe have put this in their framework, too. When we have interdisciplinary research, this is folks who are looking at recommender systems from a psychology perspective, from a harms mitigation perspective, from a community rights perspective, being able to test those systems, get access to the data in privacy respecting ways and to be able to develop the research, the evidence base that we need to definitively say the distinct harms that addictive design poses, is to all of us, but also to particularly vulnerable communities. That’s going to be a very powerful tool for enforcement bodies to be able to use to say, OK, now we’re going to ask you to fundamentally make some change if you want to operate in the single market.

but unfortunately from what we understand from our brilliant public interest uh researcher friends no one’s had access to data as of yet um and the pushback is immense i will tell you that during the negotiations of the dsa that was one of the maybe four or five articles that was being pushed back the hardest right down to the wire so we have to make use of it because that article not only allows vetted researchers to have access but public interest civil society organizations to also have access to data too right and to work collectively on that so it’s an extremely powerful tool that we need to make the use of so we can build that evidence base to say here is the impact of addictive design on multiple communities and here’s how we hold uh platforms to account under this cleared code regular framework so how to mitigate that risk.

Cesare Pitea: thank you very much and yes very fundamental questions and issues so first The question is, does regulation cause into question the business model of major platforms? That’s, of course, a very topical question. And, well, you should not expect the law to give you a very clear answer because the law is the product of a compromise, is always the product of a compromise. But we can talk about this and we can remind what Asha was saying before. It’s not always being like this. This was a very clear change in the business model that was driven by one competitor introducing certain features that were appealing. or addictive, that’s to be discussed to the public and everybody else followed after.

So that’s not the only model. The alternatives are possible even within mainstream platforms. Then the law is a process. So, for example, in the recommendation of, in the preamble to the recommendation, to our recommendation, there is language about the business model of platforms that gives a little bit of frame. Well, it’s a non -operative part of a non -binding instrument, sure, but it says something about that. And, again, this is a case to be built. And this is if what we… reproach to platforms is to be top -down, then here is the opportunity to be bottom -up, to build up this case through civil society coalitions, coalitions between scientists, social scientists, computer scientists, civil society organizations, digital rights advocacy organizations.

I think regulation like the DSA provides a framework to make these kinds of arguments and also to empower civil society to promote and to observe and to criticize and to point at possible capture interests and to keep up with the current situation. It’s very important to recognize on us on what we do and how we do it. Well, I institutionally have to say how important journalism is also in this respect, which is always forgotten. Journalism is one of the main victims of all we’re talking about today. Second, alternative infrastructures. Here I have to, again, have an institutional demeanor. I would just mention that there is another document that was adopted by the Steering Committee on Media and Information Society, which is called 10 Steps to Counter Disinformation, 10 Building Blocks, sorry, to Counter Disinformation.

And one of these 10 building blocks refers exactly to infrastructure. So we need to reduce dependency in our information, good information, and the use of public goods. And if it is a public good, it needs not only a European infrastructure, but an infrastructure that is built around the idea of public interest. As much as in the revolution in broadcasting and the opening up to private broadcasters, we have kept our public service broadcasters, we have kept our public service media, with the idea that they had a mission that went beyond the mission of broadcasters generally, of media generally. We can… We can build on this idea, and there are a lot of initiatives. EBU is promoting a platform for public service media content, a European platform for public service media content, and there are a lot of initiatives in this respect.

Then the problem… remains. So I’m asking you a question. Are you more, do you spend more time on Instagram or on Blue Sky? Exactly.

Chloe McDowell: Okay, at the risk of cutting short the conversation, I know we need to move on now to the final part of the session. So Murillo has been diligently taking notes throughout. And we’ll present now, there it is on the screen, a general formulation of what’s been discussed. So just to ask everybody if we’re all in agreement that this captures the essence of the discussion. The aim is to reach a consensus. I know that there will be a week following the event where this can be commented on as well. So the goal is not to go down to the wire on the specific wording. But if everyone’s in agreement, that this reflects accurately the main points that emerged from the debate, then…

So maybe, Mario, you want to read this out?

Murillo Salvador: okay thank you thank you for the discussion it was a pleasure to be the reporter for this and I am sorry for all of the sometimes choices of inclusion, exclusion that is part of the job. And so if there are any objections, please feel free to raise them in order to achieve a rough consensus. I will read the four points that I put together. Maybe there is some overlap here. Maybe I need to cut a few words, but here is what I put together. First, we consider platforms as a social digital infrastructure of democracy, yet these platforms were not designed to fulfill civic function. Instead, they optimize engagement, for instance, with the deployment of dark patterns like infinite scrolling.

They are not neutral communication and information channels. They distort the public debate by enabling the spread of disinformation. In this context, civil society acting within platform ecosystems such as fact -checking collectives and other actors should be supported as key partners of the digital world. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Secondly, we view the loss of cognitive sovereignty as an emerging risk linked to the embedding of AI into these platforms. Algorithmic management from the recommendation systems to automated moderation need to take into account. Democratic principles from the design stage are not as an afterthought. Here provenance and verification mechanisms are crucial as the AI -driven synthetic content and identities become more prominent in the digital public sphere faster than regulations can be deployed.

In this context, the deployment of AI tools themselves can go through preliminary steps of testing and sandboxing before reaching the market. Thirdly, the rules do not necessarily hamper innovation. In fact, existing regulation acts as a powerful deterrent for platforms’ worst outcomes in democracy. Participants called for a stronger DSA compliance. And here, civil society can play a key role as partners for public authorities. to make platform operators accountable with regards to the law. At the same time, the Council of Europe frameworks provide foundations to expand users’ agency and international human rights provide a universal basis for users seeking to make platforms take action where no regulation exists. And fourth and final point, the discussion invites us to move from a consumer perspective towards an understanding of digital citizenship as embedded in platforms.

Platform design is a fluid outcome of choices, and new business and engagement models should be incentivized, such as community -driven platforms that already exist and perform a civic function. At the same time, alternative forms of democratic engagement should be supported outside of platforms, including deliberative and multi -stakeholder formats. I’m sorry. That’s it. Many thanks. Thank you.

Chloe McDowell: And if we have no… No strong objections to those main messages, then… we will proceed. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you, Maria, and thank you to the online moderators and to the speakers as well.

Platforms’ Accountability to Strengthen the Digital Public Sphere – MT 04 2026

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Platforms’ Accountability to Strengthen the Digital Public Sphere – MT 04 2026

Get involved!

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