There has been talk of a new Dark Age. The political power of states is declining. The large conglomerates of the new digital and financial economy are extending their reach ever further and have begun to penetrate the political arena. Is it Trump who has empowered the tech magnates in his second term as US president, or are the techno-oligarchs the ones who put him in power? Who can stop them? The new global ideological framework is democracy versus authoritarianism. And the battle is being fought largely on social media.
Disconcerted by Trump's attacks and demands, the European Union is increasingly indignant and determined to forge its own path. With little capacity to distance itself militarily or in the trade war, Brussels has found a red line in the digital sphere where it can assert its strength. That is why it is taking on multinational technology companies that, in just a few years, have gone from being champions of digital freedom to becoming a threat to liberal democracies.
The clash with American tech magnates, with Elon Musk at the forefront, has become evident and notorious. Musk campaigned explicitly and actively for Trump, worked for a few months in the administration, gave electoral support to the German far right, and has given the algorithm of X (formerly Twitter), which lacks any transparency, a clear far-right bias. What has Europe done? Well, its response has been unequivocal: an investigation into WhatsApp and Google and a fine for X of 5% of its global revenue (around 120 million euros).
Alongside his American counterparts, Telegram founder Pavel Durov, a Russian, didn't hold back in his latest intervention: he sent an unprecedented mass message to all his users against Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, for what he considers an alleged attack on freedom of expression. Why? Because of the Moncloa Palace's announcement that it wants to prohibit access to social media for those under 16. On the Russian side, there is also a considerable history of pro-Russian propaganda that the Kremlin has long disseminated through social media. This is another concern for Brussels, part of the Trump-Putin pincer movement, against the dramatic backdrop of the seemingly endless war in Ukraine.
And if there were still any doubts about this clash between Europe and the tech oligarchs, this Friday the EU also targeted the Chinese company TikTok for failing to correct its blatantly addictive design, so overwhelming for the youth population. If it doesn't rectify the situation, TikTok risks a European fine that could reach 16% of its global revenue.
The enemy, of course, is not only Sánchez, who wants to position himself as a champion of European democratic values, but the entire European Union. The goal of these new magnates is to get the EU to deregulate the digital sector because they don't want to see their enormous profits reduced. The policy of preventing oligopolies and enforcing respect for users' digital rights bothers them. We'll see how this crucial struggle between democracy and tech magnates unfolds.
