Democracy Shield - Should the EU ban social media?

Democracy Shield - Should the EU ban social media?
Nothing seems holy anymore in social media today.

LinkedIn blog post, 25/05/2025, by Sven Franck (en français , in Deutsch)

TL;DR The public consultation on Europe's future Democracy shield is about to close and albeit a high signal to noise ratio courtesy of an initiative "we don't want the EU to fund NGOs" from Slovakia, making our democracies more resilient is becoming an urgency.

I like the idea « Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach » or to prevent any individual, corporation or state actor abusing a dominant position to amplify their opinion to silence opposing views. Just as the EU strives to prevent economic monopolies, a pluralistic society must also limit monopolies on information. Party-controlled staffing of public media, individuals owning a significant share of private media outlets or opaque algorithms on social media pushing specific topics - the EU should not referee what is being said, but it should limit freedom of reach.

The question for me is whether the standard slap on the wrist after investigations usually taking years to assess wrongdoing is the best way forward. The EU prides itself on making USB-C a standard, so why not introduce a European equivalent for social media? This should include:

  1. #BotFreeZones. It may be interesting to listen to the endless conversation of Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek, but imagine bot-farms leading such discussions with each other on social media to generate fake popularity and flush narratives on the screens of all users.
  2. #AITruthCopilots. The EU could require platforms to allow users to run a selectable LLM for fact checking in real-time below the fold to flag or hide questionable content. Why not create a transparent European open source LLM and make it the default choice for users. Europe already built a reputation for data privacy. Why not build one for truth?
  3. #PostInteroperability. The Data Act should make it easy for users to move cloud services from one cloud to another. Why not do the same for social media posts? If the EU were to enforce interoperability between social media platforms (making a format like ActivityPub a standard requirement), we could follow users from several platforms on our personal feed.

Of course these measures would fundamentally change or even "break" the way social media platforms operate today. Is it overdue? I think so and I would hope that the EU would allow European players to emerge. Not by enforcing any specific narrative but by leveling one of the playing fields on which our democracies are under constant attack (there are others equally important of course).

Whether for democratic resilience, technological sovereignty or as a reply to the latest trumpian tariff threat, the European Commission has no good reason to remain silent on this topic. Share or comment if you agree (or disagree). #jumpstartEU