Digital Power | When the US pulls the plug

A life on the internet. Are we prepared for it? To flounder in the web of those who own our data? Who derive consumer knowledge from it? Regulatory knowledge, manipulation knowledge, and, in the worst case, power knowledge? "This coup is taking place with software—not tanks," explains internet activist Markus Beckedahl, referring to the unholy alliance between the tech oligarchy and government power in the USA. Are we prepared for it? "re:publica," Europe's largest digital conference, which took place in Berlin at the end of May, says: We have to be. Because we're still too dependent on the US corporations.

"Life on the Internet" was the motto of the first "re:publica" in 2007. What sounded like a breakthrough back then is now drifting in a disturbingly opposite direction. Euphoria about the potential of a non-domination discourse in the digital world has given way to horror about the possibilities of domination. Like the iconography of a collective trauma, the viral photo of Donald Trump's inauguration, showing the US tech oligarchy lined up in front of the US president, haunts the presentations at this year's conference. Here are a few figures: With over 50 percent of users, Facebook remains the most-used platform in Germany, according to statista.de. According to Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger , over 75 percent of European cloud data is stored on US servers. According to Markus Beckedahl, our administrations are now 99 percent dependent on Microsoft. The "re:publica" program was thus noticeably damaged by current developments in the USA. It has been a long time since the annual conference, which is bursting at the seams – this year, according to the organizers, there were 1,200 speakers in over 650 “program sessions” – took place in such an alarming present.

"re:publica" has always been a promise "that technology is not destiny – but a choice," explained co-founder Johnny Haeusler. Among the numerous speakers were numerous initiatives, projects, and NGOs working on alternative solutions to American digital providers at various levels of our society, both private and governmental. Discussions included the European digital pact "Euro Stack," a sovereign cloud solution for the continent. The focus was on the new public streaming platform from ARD and ZDF, which aims to provide an open-source player that can serve as a replacement for YouTube. And the Digital Services Act, with which the EU intends to establish a legal framework for the major tech platforms, was repeatedly discussed. However, there are fears that its operational implementation is currently threatening to become a bargaining chip in Trump's trade dispute.

USA, Russia, Middle East – the global situation is more explosive than ever, which, paradoxically, led to this year's "re:publica" going extremely well. On its very first day, it broadcast the breaking news of the hour: In a conversation with Markus Preiß, head of the ARD capital studio, Chancellor Friedrich Merz surprisingly announced a change in German foreign policy in light of the current war events in Gaza. A direction that Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul underscored the following day. In any case, the politicians passed the microphone from hand to hand again this year. A fact that online activists criticize, as in their opinion, a civil society-oriented conference like "re:publica" creates too much proximity to the state . However, thanks to the art of dialectics, this apparently does not apply to Left Party star Heidi Reichinnek . The Bundestag member received thunderous applause from the packed auditorium, while the new CDU digital minister, Karsten Wildberger, only received occasional approval, for example when he announced that the state also wanted to support open source solutions.

But at least: Even though the former head of the Ceconomy retail group has no government experience, there is finally a dedicated Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs. Whether Wildberger's promised balance between innovation and data protection will be achieved will be the topic of the next "re:publicas." Co-founder Markus Beckedahl and other speakers repeatedly emphasized, with reference to the US, what could happen if stored data were "misused" at the government level. The term "digital fascism" was mentioned several times.

However, re:publica is always also a place for theses and counter-theses, for scientific studies and their falsification. Is AI making humanity dumber or smarter? Are social media influencing voting behavior toward the right or left? Just a few months ago, the international meta-study "Information Ecosystem and Troubled Democracy" put forward the thesis that there is currently no empirical evidence for the influence of digital disinformation on democratic processes. Instead, according to Matthias Kettemann, a professor at the University of Innsbruck and one of the study's authors, it is the media and political discussion of disinformation that fuels mistrust and destabilizes social processes. So, does re:publica also operate with media-generated alarmism? Certainly not, because the positions are too diverse for that.

The counter-argument to the study was provided by journalist and lawyer Torben Klausa of Agora Digitale Transformation gGmbH, who examined the impact of social media on democratic discourse . Klausa argued that the myth that platforms are neutral providers persists. The only problem is that much content is harmful to discourse but legal. His plea: the EU must link its regulatory efforts to the functional logic of the platforms, rather than to content. For example, by encouraging them to highlight content not based on interaction, which prioritizes extreme content, but rather on its ability to build consensus. User choices would also be conceivable, enabling alternative third-party algorithms that sort content according to different rules.

Another point of contention was the global success of generative AI. Ute Schmid, Professor of Cognitive Systems at the University of Bamberg, pointed out the risks of early knowledge acquisition in schools. If used without reflection, AI leads to a "McDonaldization of learning," as the reward no longer lies in the acquisition of knowledge, but in the rapid AI generation of answer chunks. She therefore strongly advocated for new discussions on subject-specific didactics.

And so, at this year's "re:publica," which sought intergenerational dialogue under the motto "Generation XYZ," the usual discursive back and forth took place. A proven method for resisting a complete "coup of the cognitive by the digital," as political scientist Albrecht von Lucke put it. Or, as "re:publica" co-founder Andreas Gebhard put it, simply to "educate" people a little.