In their brief report published by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, PD Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann and Martin Fertmann describe how social media councils can function as a tool for social reconnection of the private orders of digital platforms.
You can download the report here (pdf, in German)
An Overview of the Most Important Findings
Ensuring political participation in the digital age, including on the internet, is an important challenge.
The central achievement of democratic revolutions was to win co-determination in the rules that apply in certain legal circles, especially with regard to what can be said.
Platforms set the rules for communication spaces that are crucial for opinion aggregation and articulation largely without democratic control and only with very selective judicial correction.
Our democracy needs an update towards "democratising" the increasingly private nature of the communication order: Democracy must be made platform-proof; the platforms must meet increased democratic legitimacy requirements.
Platform councils form a promising concept to reduce existing deficits of corporate norm setting and enforcement. Existing, comparable institutions of media regulation, for instance as press or broadcasting councils, can serve as a source of inspiration but should not be transferred schematically in view of the strongly differing control needs.
Reliable empirical data on the optimal design of platform councils is still missing. According to the current state of knowledge, a combination of a board of appeal (quasi-judicial) and participation in the design of the rules (quasi-legislative) seems to be optimal. In any case, however, participation in the evaluation and design of precisely those measures that restrict the visibility of their content to others, unnoticed by the respective users, is crucial.
While platform councils can help to examine possible violations of general terms and conditions or community standards in individual cases, their true added value lies in the systemic improvement of companies' governance systems beyond the individual case, which is made more likely by representative staff.
Quasi-auditory platform councils are not suited to reviewing corporate decisions en masse. Rather, their potential lies in reviewing less "leading cases" to improve general systems.
The core risk of platform councils is that they act as corporate fig leaves to hide grievances or provide only selective remedies; civil society oversight must be used to counter this.
Platform councils should report on the extent to which the systemic improvements they are supposedly triggering are actually occurring, and provide researchers with the necessary data access to verify this.
Despite remaining deficits, the (even minimal) iterative improvement through stronger social involvement of private corporate decision-making can only make sense. Even a slightly improved distribution of decision-making power in platforms should not be rejected on principle ("it could be better") by applying separation of powers arguments.
The Facebook Oversight Board is a first important example of a platform council, which - in terms of advantages and disadvantages - provides good analytical material, especially since the first decisions have already been published. However, it should not be exaggerated as an ideal or monopolise the discussion about platform councils conceptually or conceptually.
The current development of platform regulation at the European level contains new proposals for the instrumentalisation of private governance systems, but not (yet) any corresponding creative attempts to increase the involvement of citizens in platform standard setting.
It seems promising to develop a model for platform councils based on the extensive coverage of broadcasting councils by constitutional court jurisprudence and literature.
The debate on the potential of platform councils to re-import democratic values into the private orders of public communication has only just begun. For the time being, they present themselves as a good opportunity to increase the legitimacy of these orders, strengthen the protection of individual rights and promote social cohesion, despite the still existing vagueness in their design.
Kettemann, M.C.; Fertmann, M. (2021) Die Demokratie plattformfest machen. Social Media Councils als Werkzeug zur gesellschaftlichen Rückbindung der privaten Ordnungen digitaler Plattformen [Making Democracy Plattform-Proof. Social Media Councils as a Tool for Social Reconnection of the Private Orders of Digital Platforms]. Potsdam-Babelsberg: Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, May 2021.
