Big tech is picking apart European democracy, but there is a solution: switch off its algorithms | Johnny Ryan
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The latest actions of Musk and Zuckerberg are a sign of things to come, but the EU already has the power to give people back control.
Elon Musk’s latest attempts at direct political interference illustrate the grave danger that Europe is facing. He has suggested overthrowing the UK government, asking if “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”. Three days after that, he hosted Germany’s far-right candidate for chancellor in forthcoming federal elections in a livestream discussion on the social media platform X, which he owns. It is likely that his rigging of X’s algorithm helped push both into millions of people’s feeds. It also emerged last week that Musk’s SpaceX may start providing a major part of Italy’s defence network.
Europe’s leaders should view this conduct as a sign of things to come. We foolishly allowed control of digital media and infrastructure to concentrate in the hands of a few US tech oligarchs. Now US big tech is Donald Trump’s tool.
Johnny Ryan is director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
