The biggest youth platform in the world is joining the Platform Power Coalition for a Digital Services Act that empowers young people. European Youth Forum will bring youth voices to the coalition, vindicating that digital rights are youth rights. Young people should be able to enjoy their digital environment without fearing privacy violations, discrimination or manipulation. Here is what you need to know about this alliance.

Platform Power Campaign

The Platform Power campaign is focused on three main issues around the Digital Services Act. The Digital Services Act (or DSA) is a piece of legislation that aims to regulate and consolidate various separate pieces of EU legislation that address illegal or harmful online content, and the provision of digital services across the EU. In April 2022 a political deal was achieved on the DSA, and on 4 July this will be sealed by the EU Parliament.

We work on a coalition of 12 organisations (more to follow!) and coordinate actions to have a Digital Services Act done right! The European Youth Forum (YFJ) is one of them. YFJ works with youth rights to make sure that young people are empowered and encouraged to achieve their fullest potential as global citizens.

As the biggest youth platform in the world, representing over 10 million young Europeans, bringing YFJ into the Platform Power coalition means adding youth voices to some of the most important discussions of our time.

Why is the DSA important for young people?

Today’s young people are the first generation whose entire lives are encoded in digital data. As the biggest group of users on social media platforms, young people are most affected by changes to the way the online world is managed.

In fact, 75% of young people reported wanting to know how their data is used when they use their social media accounts to access other websites and 90% of young people in the EU would find it useful to know their digital rights. However, young people’s rights often tend to fall under the radar. Strict rules that are in place to protect children suddenly fall away for 18-year-olds and above, exposing young people to a deliberately confusing landscape of data extraction, unwanted content and cyberbullying.

Far from the common belief of being “digital natives”, young people are not always aware of the harms facing them in the online world. Whilst the majority are at ease using social media apps and entertainment platforms, this does not necessarily translate into an innate knowledge of how to browse safely, how algorithms function or how to protect oneself online.

In fact, 60% of young people surveyed do not believe that social media companies know their ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or political beliefs. Yet personal information about young people is being inferred by data profiling all the time, resulting in a risk of discrimination.

Young people are not in favour of targeted advertising. These are invasive, manipulative and triggering ads based on our personal data. However, we know that Meta’s algorithms target young people with personalised ads that exploit users’ mental vulnerabilities such as trauma.

While we are all affected by this, not all young people experience the digital space in the same way. LGBTQ+ people, young activists, young women and people of colour are often more vulnerable to these downfalls. Big Tech companies use algorithms and surveillance ads that make us stay longer on their platforms. These are generally focused on polarisation and misinformation. All of this – surveillance ads, algorithms that shape what we see or not on the internet and deceptive design practices- reduce our ability to organise among young people for the causes we care about, such as climate change, social justice, access to fair remuneration and employment, democratic engagement, etc.

Big Tech companies should not have a free playground to decide young people’s lives and future.

Young people should have the power to choose what they want to see online, and not to be drawn into manipulative design practices that lull us into doing or buying things we didn’t want. When young people don’t have this power, their life’s decisions are reduced and their opportunities are diminished.

What needs to be done?

Young people should have the power and right to choose from a world of opportunities and discovery on the internet and in their digital lives, not be subject to data extraction, manipulation and illegal content.

The DSA is a good first step. Now the implementation of this law and follow-up recommendations need to stay true to the intentions behind this legislation.

We now need:

• a real end to surveillance ads for all
• rights-respecting content governance, in all languages used on the platform
• limits to algorithmic recommendations pushing young people to act in ways that do not reflect their true wants or needs
• proper enforcement of laws
• enough political will from our decision-makers
• Big Tech taking the law seriously
• people looking for alternatives to BigTech platforms.

We are excited to work together and make sure that the implementation of the Digital Services Act empowers young people!

Join us in this movement, and make digital spaces a space you can flourish and thrive in.

(Contribution by: Maria Belén Luna Sanz, Campaigns Officer, EDRi and Lauren Mason, Policy and Advocacy Manager, European Youth Forum)

Friday night’s political agreement on the Digital Services Act (DSA) is a good first step towards protecting people’s rights on the internet and to some extent limiting the immense power that Big Tech companies have over people and democracies.

EDRi welcomes the conclusion of a political agreement for the DSA on the night of 22nd to 23rd April. The DSA has the potential to serve as a global benchmark for how to regulate today’s hyper-centralised platform economy while also protecting people’s fundamental rights online, including freedom of expression and access to information, the rights to privacy, and non-discrimination.

In particular, we welcome the DSA’s appeals and redress mechanisms that will allow users to flag potentially illegal online content to hosting intermediaries, who in turn will be required to react through a transparent response process. Crucially, intermediaries will be able to carefully follow that process without being threatened by immediate legal liability at the expense of the rule of law, and without replacing independent judicial redress options for users.

“It’s relieving to see that EU legislators have learned from past mistakes such as the Copyright Directive, and in the DSA stayed away from creating a general monitoring obligation for online platforms,”

Jan Penfrat, Senior Policy Advisor leading EDRi’s work on the DSA.

EDRi also welcomes the first timid steps taken by the EU to limit the harmful business model of surveillance advertising and prohibit some of the most deceptive interface design practices deployed by online platforms against their users. Such a move by the EU was unthinkable just a few years ago. EDRi and other civil society organisations have consistently raised lawmakers’ awareness of surveillance ads as one of the root causes of online harms and polarisation. It is regrettable, however, that the political agreement has watered down this much-needed systemic change to such an extent that it is unclear how much it will actually bring visible positive change for people.

“At EDRi, we have advocated hard for the DSA to enable a real transformation of the online advertising industry—away from cheating and spying on users and towards a safer, privacy-respecting ad ecosystem. While the DSA compromise will help phase out some of the worst practices of ad-driven online platforms, it can only be the starting point for more profound change,”

Jan Penfrat

For example, the DSA’s prohibition of using highly sensitive personal data to target people with surveillance ads will be limited to online platforms only, and therefore leave the vast majority of ad networks embedded in common websites—as well as the data extraction industry behind it—untouched. Similarly, the prohibition of deceptive interface designs will likely exclude the most pervasive and annoying ones: cookie and tracking banners.

“Although the DSA’s final ad regulation is not perfect, at EDRi we are proud that we were able to help bring a ban of surveillance ads into the mainstream political debate in the EU”

Diego Naranjo, Head of Policy at European Digital Rights.

As a human rights organisation EDRi has been very concerned about the new Crisis Response Mechanism that was added to the DSA at the 11th hour as a response to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Temporary crises should not lead to permanent infrastructures of state control. While earlier versions of this mechanism would have given the EU Commission unchecked executive power to unilaterally declare an EU-wide state of ‘digital emergency’, it is not least thanks to a strong advocacy effort from EDRi and many other civil society organisations that, according to press reports, negotiators eventually built in a requirement for the Commission to obtain the green light of national independent platform regulators first.

“We celebrate today a first step to reduce the power of Big Tech companies, even though we would have preferred that both the DSA and DMA were more ambitious, the compromise reflects what was possible given the current political majorities. We will work towards advancing safeguards and rights during the implementation of the new rules and support strong enforcement by regulatory authorities. By doing so, we also aim at supporting real alternatives to the currently dominant surveillance business model.”

Diego Naranjo

EDRi and its member organisations will continue to advocate legislation, policies and practices that uphold people’s rights and that shape the internet as an open, fair and inclusive digital environment for everyone.

READ MORE:

• EDRi: A new crisis response mechanism for the DSA (2022)
• EDRi: Abolish manipulative dark patterns and creepy online ads, ask 72 civil society organisations (2022)
• EDRi: Surveillance-based advertising: An industry broken by design and by default (2021)
• EDRi: Digital Services Act: The EDRi guide to 2,297 amendment proposals (2021)

Thousands of people took action in the days before the Digital Services Act (DSA) vote in the EU Parliament, asking Members of the EU Parliament (MEPs) to end surveillance advertising.

As part of the Platform Power campaign, we have coordinated with many civil society organisations and raised our voices for stronger laws against the business model of Big Tech online platforms. Together, we succesfully pressured law-makers to put people at the center of the debate.

On 20 January 2022, the Members of the EU Parliament (MEPs) decided BigTech platforms should no longer be allowed to use surveillance ads on children and have significantly limited surveillance ads for adults. More, the EU Parliament voted BigTech platforms should be prohibited from using ‘dark patterns’, so called manipulative interfaces 

Banning surveillance ads

See below how our representatives in the EU Parliament voted on the restrictions to surveillance ads.

Despite the fact that MEPs did not vote for a full ban on surveillance ads, they voted a strong amendment that severely restricted the use of people’s most sensitive personal data to target them with paid messages. In detail, the amendment prohibits the targeting or amplifications techniques that process, reveal or infer personal data of children or the sensible data of adults – for the purpose of displaying advertisement. Such sensible data includes religious beliefs, sexual orientation and racial or ethnic origin.

Prohibition on ‘dark patterns‘

MEPs also agreed to prohibit the use of ‘dark patterns’, so called manipulative interfaces that are designed to trick users into unintentionally consenting to sharing their personal data. Dark patterns are systematically used by Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Youtube but also by countless apps and websites to push users into consenting to surveillance based advertising.

See below how our representatives in the EU Parliament voted on ending ‘dark patterns’

People power makes change happen

The actions digital rights activists have taken ahead of the vote have been crucial for this success. We cherish the energy you put into making the digitalised society one based on fairness, equal opportunities, choice and justice.

The January DSA vote in the EU Parliament emphasised important protections for our rights – also in regards to people’s freedom of expression online and right to secure communications.

Moving ahead, the EU negotiations on how to regulate BigTech go into trilogues – a process notorious for its opacity and lack of democratic scrutiny. Do you want to know more about how the EU works and why the trilogues are special?

Let us know with a vote in the Twitter poll below.

No, thank you.

That’s what people think about surveillance ads.

Global Witness commissioned a research to conduct a survey amongst 2,034 regular social media users (past 30 days) in France and Germany to find out if the biggest argument used by Big Tech to keep prying on our personal data was true. The results show that 83% don’t want the personal data they’ve shared with the social media company to be used for targeted ads.

Big Tech companies argue that surveillance ads are needed for us to get the full experience: get the info we care about, find the shoes we want, and discover new worlds. But we know that is not true. Most often, surveillance ads end up discriminating against us, limiting our choice and opportunities, and harming our mental health.

However the question remained. ‘Do people want personalised ads online?’

The research found out that people don’t even want the personal data that they shared with the social media company to be used for targeted ads (83%) nor their behavioural data tracked outside the platform (78%). In fact, they found that regardless of the purpose, the majority of people don’t want to receive personalised ads online (57%), including commercial or political. Furthermore, in the particular case of political ads, there is also a solid understanding of how using surveillance ads can hinder democracy (44%).

There is much more interesting data you can find in the full report, but if you are leaving this blog with a message, let it be: surveillance ads only benefit Big Tech. People don’t want them.

Today, 14th of December, the European Parliament Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) has approved its much-anticipated report on the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The DSA affects how intermediaries like Google and Amazon regulate and influence user activity on their platforms, including people’s ability to exercise their rights and freedoms online. The DSA also aims at limiting the negative impact of the most powerful online platforms on people and puts limits on how EU Member States can interfere with people’s free expression online.

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European Digital Rights (EDRi) welcomes IMCO’s clear commitment to the cornerstones of EU internet regulation, namely the conditional liability regime for online intermediaries and the prohibition of general monitoring obligations. Conditional liability prevents incentives for platforms to over-remove legitimate online speech for avoiding liability risk, and therefore protects people’s freedom of expression.

The prohibition of general monitoring obligations prevents EU Member States from requiring online platforms to scan and unilaterally judge all the information people share online. Those foundations are vital to protect our freedom of expression and access to information in a digital society.

“The IMCO committee has done a good job in fending off some of the worst ideas that had floated around in the negotiations, like short removal timelines for online content or the exemption of online content posted by TV and radio stations from any scrutiny – even if those outlets can spread disinformation or are mere government propaganda tools.”

– Jan Penfrat, Senior Policy Advisor at EDRi.

EDRi also welcomes IMCO’s decision to add strong protections against the manipulation of people consent online via ‘dark patterns’ to the DSA and to take a clear position for protecting the overwhelming need of users and businesses for secure end-to-end encryption technology. Dark patterns are user interface designs deliberately built to push users into making a certain choice that they would otherwise never have made, like the way most cookie banners work today.

EDRi is however disappointed by the lack of ambition in regulating surveillance advertising. The surveillance-based business model of dominant technology companies is based on pervasive profiling and on extracting as much personal information from individuals and groups, both online and offline.

An overwhelming majority of experts agree that the best way of protecting people against pervasive surveillance by companies is to ban those right-infringing, manipulative and discriminatory practices in favour of an advertising ecosystem that respects people and the law.

Many small and medium-tech enterprises in Europe, the EDPS, the EDPB, as well as a large coalition of consumer groups, social justice and human rights advocates have pushed for the DSA to better protect Europeans and foster innovation in the online advertising market. Yet, the full might of Big Tech’s lobbying apparatus in Brussels eventually prevented any meaningful reform.”

– Jan Penfrat, Senior Policy Advisor at EDRi.

The lack of interoperability for recommender systems, that could have enabled concrete alternatives to the current addictive, obsessive engagement-based systems that enable polarisation and disinformation is also disappointing. IMCO missed a real opportunity here for improving people’s online experience by giving them control over the kind of content they wish to see and interact with.

Furthermore, we regret the inclusion of mandatory identification on porn platforms which falls short of the need for holistic solutions to online gender-based violence and the publication of non-consensual sexual images. This measure will be detrimental to the rights of sex workers and online content creators. By forcing sex workers to expose their real identities and contact details, it puts these often stigmatised and criminalised communities at risk of hacking and abuse.

EDRi and partners invite anyone who would like to continue to challenge the grip that platforms have over our lives, communities and democracies to join our campaign to take back our power.