Tag: people

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)

Today, 15th of December, the European Parliament has approved its position on the Digital Markets Act (DMA). While unfortunately, it scales down the DMA scope by limiting who will be considered a gatekeeper, the Parliament position adds a number of notable improvements from a digital rights perspective that help challenge digital gatekeepers’ overwhelming power.

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In particular, European Digital Rights (EDRi) welcomes the addition of interoperability requirements for instant messaging and social media services provided by gatekeepers. Such core service interoperability is a pro-competitive tool that can play a major role in ensuring market contestability, innovation, competition and the empowerment of all of us.

“Enabling providers of smaller social media and messenger apps to interoperate with gatekeeper services is an important milestone in bringing back real choice for people.”

– Jan Penfrat, Senior Policy Advisor, EDRi.

While we welcome the Parliament position’s clear prohibition for gatekeepers to combine or cross-use personal data without consent, we call on the Rapporteur to close potential legal loopholes in article 5.1(a) that could allow gatekeepers to circumvent their legal obligation under GDPR to request consent for each processing purpose.

We support the new prohibition of dark patterns and encourage negotiators to ensure that clearer language is used to describe how regular dark patterns look like as has been the case in the European Parliament IMCO Committee’s position on the Digital Services Act. 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.

“We are very glad to see that the Parliament is taking a first step towards a fair and interoperable market. It will now be important to put the objective of ending corporate concentration into a clear and enforceable language.”

– Christoph Schmon, International Policy Director, EDRi member, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Just like the original European Commission proposal, the Parliament’s DMA position contains a number of additional important “dos and don’ts” that will increase user freedom and protection, as well as hopefully lead to a more diverse digital environment for all. For example, the freedom to install and remove the apps people actually prefer as well as to choose the best app stores rather than the one proscribed by the gatekeeper.

EDRi also very much welcomes the Parliament’s clear commitment to enabling end-users, consumer groups and other civil society organisations to support the DMA’s enforcement regime with a right to lodge complaints, provide input to the European Commission’s own investigations, and access documents relating to ongoing cases.

“Participation of end users and civil society organisations in the monitoring and enforcement of the DMA is fundamental to its successful implementation and to redress the imbalance of power between individuals and big platforms.”

– Tomaso Falchetta, Global Policy Lead, EDRi member, Privacy International.

The European Parliament and the Council are planning to commence trialogue negotiations for the Digital Markets Act in early 2022, expecting to finalise the Regulation by the spring.