Dear John,
Once again, the EU shows us how to hold giant social media companies accountable. The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is miles ahead of the UK’s Online Safety Act, when it comes to how social media recommends people content, especially during election time.
Just today, the EU Commission opened an investigation into TikTok, which may have breached the terms of the DSA during the Romanian elections held in November. The EU will analyse whether the platform, one of the largest social media companies on Earth, “properly assess[ed] and mitigate[d] systemic risks linked to election integrity.”
Officials will look at two major elements of TikTok’s business model:
“Recommender systems”, the automated ways that the platform “suggests” content to people, and whether it could be gamed by foreign or malicious actors intent on spreading targeted disinformation
TikTok’s policies on political advertising and paid-for political content, specifically whether the platform “diligently mitigated the risks posed by specific regional and linguistic aspects of national elections.”
In Britain today, the power of social media platforms to warp political debate is almost completely unchecked. The Online Safety Act, as we’ve established in the final section of the APPG for Fair Elections’ Report Free But Not Fair, was stripped of key provisions around targeted disinformation and political advertising. Britain is letting platforms like TikTok, X, Facebook, and Instagram do more or less whatever they want.
Of course free speech must always be protected, and neither Open Britain – nor our partners at Fair Vote UK, who were founded in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal – believe that mass removal of political content is a workable or fair solution.
But we cannot overlook the vast power platforms currently have to control public debate, transforming digital public squares – which should be for everyone – into the privately controlled fiefdoms of billionaires like Elon Musk.
Our APPG has recommended that we start requiring these companies to acknowledge that disinformation exists on their platforms. Here in the UK, the Online Safety Act does nothing to address the way tech billionnaires such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg choose to control the information served up to us, even when their algorithms feed people false and misleading information that drives violence on our streets (as we saw during August’s riots).
The EU shows us that it’s possible – if never easy – to curb the dominance of the tech giants, who for far too long have had incredible power to manipulate democratic debate. Moreover, that we can do it without jeopardising the crucial right to free speech.
In a democracy, no one political ideology or interest group should have their speech privileged or prioritised. There are now more than 100 Parliamentarians in our APPG who not only understand that point well but who are prepared to take a stand against the unfairness it brings to our elections.
That is part of the broader, much-needed renewal of our democracy that we are working to deliver. Together with our work on Proportional Representation and Dark Money, this is laying the foundations for a fairer, more transparent political system – one where every voice counts, not just those with wealth, influence, or access.
The quiet revolution is underway. Change is coming!
