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Author: Aline Blankertz, Policy and Public Sector Advisor, Wikimedia Deutschland
We all use online platforms, from Google Search to WhatsApp to Microsoft Office. It is about time that users also get a say in how they work. In reality, we are far from this. But the direction is clear: platform councils can make decisions according to democratic principles.
It is a truism by now that the big digital corporations are too powerful: their market capitalisation exceeds the gross domestic product of many countries, they have billions of users, make billions in quarterly profits and use these profits to exert political influence.
There is broad consensus in society that their power and harmful effects must be limited. The EU has introduced many regulations and control mechanisms to this end, from the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act to stricter merger control and legal action against competition violations and tax avoidance.
But the efforts up to this point are too fragmented and diluted by lobbying power. Too little is changing in the balance sheets and products of Big Tech. So how can we tame these powerful infrastructures of our daily lives and make the platforms more compatible with the public interest?
We need more democratic governance
Academic research has explored the potential role of platform councils and considers them to be ‘a powerful tool to bring people and their problems into platform norm-making processes – if they are implemented correctly’. The researchers point to a need for new institutions in which users themselves, civil society or academic expertise are represented.
Collective governance is an essential feature of public-interest digital policy. This is also feasible for global projects that have similarly high user numbers as Big Tech‘s platforms.
Projects of free knowledge, above all Wikipedia, show that this is possible. The communities that make up the online encyclopaedia are continuously developing it and also discuss issues such as knowledge equity and how to deal with artificial intelligence. To negotiate this, the communities have rules – just as in a democracy. We can also establish similar principles for digital corporations.
Building on experience and experiments
A platform council can enable various forms of digital co-determination, including full self-administration. The idea is not new. It relies on established principles of democracy that have long been tried and tested outside the digital world in the form of trade unions and works councils.
A range of existing institutions can serve as inspiration for how councils could make digital platforms such as Instagram, Amazon, Google Maps and the like more democratic, open and safe. German broadcasting councils control the content of public broadcasting programmes and are often referred to as practical examples. In the gaming sector, councils can represent player interests.
The most publicised example is Meta’s Oversight Board: It is designed to clarify particularly difficult questions regarding the rules for content moderation on Facebook and Instagram. The board’s decisions only relate to individual cases. Meta can ignore more general recommendations and has done so in the past, for example, in the case of recommendations that the board formulated in the context of conflicts in Ethiopia.
In the young debate about platform councils, the focus has so far been on social media councils for content moderation. However, because platforms play such a central role in shaping many types of interactions, there is a strong argument to broaden the scope of collective governance decisions. The biggest challenge for the democratic governance of platforms is probably to involve the relevant and affected groups – and to negotiate conflicts of interest according to democratic rules. This requires some form of experimentation: The current German government had even planned to ‘establish platform councils’ in its coalition agreement, but has not implemented this yet.
A suitable council for every platform
Since platforms fulfil different functions, no single council can fit all platforms. What decisions a platform council should be involved in differs across platforms. However, a basic rule should apply to all of them: the interests of users and consumers must be represented as well as the concerns of people and groups affected by platforms. This can be done through civil society organisations and associations. In addition, academic experts should provide input to empirically substantiate debates and decisions.
The scope of a platform council is a political decision about how much weight to assign to social interests alongside or instead of profit maximisation. A council could have a very limited influence on decisions regarding data access or the design of algorithmic recommendations. However, it could also be involved in core business decisions.
What this might look like can be seen by taking a look at two much-used platforms: Google Maps and Amazon’s sales platform.
Guided by a platform council: Google Maps
Google Maps influences individual mobility and the mobility planning of municipalities and sharing providers, the use of local services and tourism. Advertisers who pay for prominent display in the app, such as restaurants or retailers, are increasingly playing a role. The platform also has an indirect effect on car manufacturers and petrol stations.
There is currently no transparency in Google Maps – let alone any influence – over why the app shows users certain routes, modes of transport and search results. We can only assume that users’ interests are weighed against the advertising revenue and commission that Google collects from mobility providers. For example, Google owns shares in the sharing provider Lime whose services have long been displayed as the preferred mode of transport
A platform council responsible for data governance would have a rather narrow scope. It could decide how and to what extent the platform collects usage data and to what extent Alphabet is allowed to pass it on. Such a council could also decide that other map providers or urban planning departments should be given access to real-time data in order to improve their services, such as bus routes. When making such decisions, a platform council could also consider how granular such data should be in order to prevent the movement patterns of individuals or groups from being traceable.
Broadening the platform council‘s scope could allow it to determine the parameters according to which search results are designed and selected on Google Maps. Currently, a green leaf indicates the ‘environmentally friendly’ route. However, this is based purely on Google’s goodwill and is not externally verifiable.
An even broader scope could include the core operations of Google Maps. Such a platform council would decide on data, algorithms and connections to other products and platforms. This would be compatible with unbundling Google Maps from the Alphabet group. In this case, a platform council could also take steps to integrate Maps with the non-commercial community project OpenStreetMap.
A Prime platform council: Amazon
Amazon offers countless products on its sales platform, from koala costumes to 3D printers, some from its own production and some from third-party suppliers. Amazon combines these with its own warehouses and logistics, along with an increasing amount of advertising. Platform decisions also affect employees (from highly paid technical experts to precariously employed logistics staff) and customers (some with and some without a Prime subscription).
Currently, Amazon is free to design the platform as it wishes. In recent years, some barriers have been added through antitrust law and the Digital Markets Act at the EU level. But Amazon can freely set prices (for its own products) or charge commissions (for third-party products and for logistics and other services). And the company can design search results and suggestions – including ads. It is completely opaque how Amazon balances the interests of the parties involved. It is plausible that Amazon uses its large customer base to ask third-party providers and advertisers to pay up.
A platform council with a narrow scope could focus on the design of recommendation algorithms. It could set parameters for such an algorithm, such as the proportion of advertising, the weighting of price, rating and commission. Or it could decide to allow algorithms from external providers, such as Greenpeace or consumer associations.
A broader scope could include decisions on data access and use, for example, whether less data should be used for advertising and more data should be made available externally – such as for market analyses. A platform council could have a say in how employment relationships are structured, similar to trade unions – from issues such as workplace surveillance and delivery times to wages.
A council could also get a say in core business decisions, for example, whether the focus should be on further growth or whether other indicators should be given more weight – such as reducing resource consumption or avoiding waste.
Let’s work together to tame Big Tech and build alternatives!
Making platform governance collective can go hand in hand with other approaches. The power of large corporations should continue to be limited by breaking them up, taxing them adequately and reducing their lobbying influence. It is also important to build public-interest alternatives.
Ideally, platforms governed by councils will coexist with public-interest alternatives, giving people a range of good options. We already know that community-based platforms operate according to fundamentally different principles. We see this in the decentralised fediverse with the social medium Mastodon. The OpenStreetMap project and, of course, Wikipedia are further examples of collectively governed projects. These and other currently small platforms could grow more easily if they were not in competition with large, profit-oriented platforms. What is more, the latter repeatedly buy up potential competitors or keep them small through exclusivity agreements or other measures.
There are many ways in which we can manage platforms collectively. There is a lot to learn. But we know the principles of negotiating different interests and should apply them to our digital infrastructures. We can start with narrower scopes and expand them over time. More societal control can only make platforms better. It is high time for us to demand control – and for policymakers to create the necessary legal framework.
About the author: Aline is an applied economist with expertise in the data and platform economy. As part of the policy team at Wikimedia, she works on creating suitable conditions for free knowledge, e.g. through data access and free software. Previously, she led analyses on online platforms, privacy and algorithms at Oxera. She was co-chair at an organisation for data collaboration and spent two years at a digital policy think tank.