108 Erik Tuchtfeld and the ANTIFA tech

00:00:02 Domen Savič / Citizen D

Welcome everybody, it’s the 13^th of March 2025, but you are listening to this episode of Citizen D podcast on the 15th of March same year. We are again, you know, catching the deadline…

This time we are joined by Erik Tuchtfeld, co-chair of the D64 Center for Digital Progress, here to talk about the recent Chaos Computer Club post that calls for digital infrastructure resilient against fascism.

Hello Eric and thanks for dropping by.

00:00:36 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

Thanks a lot for the invitation, it’s a pleasure to be here.

00:00:39 Domen Savič / Citizen D

Let’s start with the obvious – what does fascism crave in relations with digital infrastructure?

00:00:47 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

So, what they’re craving for is on the one hand opposing any kind of resistance, any kind of opposition, so what they’re looking for is a totalitarian and absolutist form of government, basically, and at the same time, to reach this aim, they need to surveil and monitor society.

Both is necessary for them to achieve their aims and with the fascist movement movements we currently looking at a particular in the United States, but also in in in Europe, and in particular also in Germany, where the right-wing party, the AFD, is also rising.

We can see that right, populist, authoritarian movements are on the rise and that there is increasing connection between private surveillance, capitalist big tech companies and actual states, as actual state governments.

00:01:45 Domen Savič / Citizen D

Hmm, so how did we get here, how did we change enter this field, where we were often told that tech companies or technology in general is apolitical, it doesn’t have anything to do with parties or political movements, it’s there for all it serves the greater good of humanity to this really stark and harsh reality where we can see parties and autocratic government cooperating with big tech companies in order to, as you say, surveil and monitor the general population?

00:02:31 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

Yes. First of all, I don’t really think that technology was ever neutral, so that is maybe some kind of myth, a myth which is very popular also in the tech scene, the civil society engaged in questions of digitalization…. But technology is never neutral, technology can be used for certain purposes and the way technology is, normally foster certain goals and impedes others.

And that’s fine, I think, because there are certain things we do not want to have in the Internet, and this can also be something where like bipartisan issues and many people agree on, this could be something, for example, spam like people across the political spectrum agree that there should be less spam, or that the distribution of material of child sexual abuse should be impeded.

Where the discussion begins then, is how to do this and for what other purposes and purposes, which are more political, this technology can be used.

You asked… how did we get here? I think what the EU lacked in the past decades was a will to deal with the stark accumulation of power, the concentration of power in the hands of very few. Talking about big tech is not something we do for five years or so, but since 10 or 20 years more or less, there’s talk about the concentration of power, about surveillance capitalism, but the EU only reacted by reforming them, by trying to tell them that they need to deploy their power in a certain way, but it didn’t take the power as such, the concentration as such.

And I think that led to the situation we’re in right now, we have a concentration of power which has very little precedent in the history of basically humankind… that so few people can control the communication spaces of so many, of effectively billions of people.

Currently, I think we see that these people who are in power, who have so much power in their hands, fear somehow threatened, and they react to this threat by trying to exercise total control and trying to diminish any kind of protest and opposition they are observing on their on the platform.

00:05:20 Domen Savič / Citizen D

Hmm, first follow up question. Why was it so hard for the EU to react or act effectively in this field?

00:05:28 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

I mean, I think in the end it was a question of political will and the EU, I think, could have acted and we see that in, in certain areas they have also acted… I mean, they are sanctions against, for example Microsoft, also Facebook/Meta, which go into the billions.

But there was never this very strong assumption that the concentration of power as such might be a problem, it was always about the concrete way these powerful oligarchs or these powerful companies exercise their power.

Do you try to regulate the way they’re exercising their power first with the data protection regulation and also, with some antitrust competition measures they’ve taken against the platforms, but the general assumption was always “OK, the system as such is not the problem, but the way it currently works… if you reform the system to a certain extent, this will fix our problems.”

But there was not the recognition that the system as such is flawed and that additional public sphere, which is oriented toward profit, but is currently the case with private companies and not towards the common good… that this is such a problem and that it needs alternatives, that the concentration of power needs to be attacked, for example, with antitrust measures, that something which maybe could have happened more actively in the past, that also mergers…

I mean, we currently see these products which are used by millions of people, are not developed by the platforms or by the companies which own them at the moment, but were simply bought and these kinds of acquisitions, these kinds of mergers could have been controlled more sharply in the past.

The European Union could have also invested more in building alternatives, alternatives to the big tech companies, which are all based in the United States, which are all creatures of Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley’s ideology, apart from Tiktok, something which is also coming from China, but still mainly these companies are based in the US, and in particular, not in Europe, they’re not inventions inheriting European values.

00:07:52 Domen Savič / Citizen D

This is an often-repeated question or a comparison between the US and the EU in terms of innovating in the digital economy or the Information Society, right? We usually say or there’s the general perception that the US is the cradle of innovation while the EU is the cradle of regulation, right?

Would you say that is factual, that is true, or is there some other… are there some other powers in play that the enabled the US to be the cradle of innovation? If it is in fact, and on the on the other hand, that it tasks the EU with regulation?

00:08:48 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

I mean it is a very common, it is repeated by hundreds of scholars and politicians, it’s very popular and I guess there is some truth in it, but still, I don’t think that it is that easy.

First of all, I’m not really sure if the United States are so good at innovation, there’s a lot of innovation also going on in the European Union and we have a very active open source and civil society scene here in in Europe as well, maybe even more active in certain parts.

But what American companies are very good at is scaling, getting big really, really quick, and then also maybe not caring so much about the problems they’re causing for others in this process of scaling and this process of getting bigger and bigger.

I mean this is permanently coined by the term “move fast and break things” and maybe exactly that is something which is not possible in the European Union because there is more regulation and there is more supervision over rules than in the United States.

But that’s not, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature, right? We don’t want certain practices, we don’t want companies to break things and I mean break things somehow sounds harmless, but when we talk about Facebook, for example, there is this concrete evidence that the way Facebook moderated content led to a genocide. So that’s not simply breaking things, but it’s harming and being responsible for the death of many, many people.

And EU regulation, maybe that is the hypothesis I would like to phrase, impedes this kind of innovation, this kind of scaling, but it’s a scaling which does not really benefit humankind and, I am being a bit dramatic, I don’t think that something is missing when we don’t have this kind of scaling, but the question is how do we protect ourselves then against the scale factors of other companies of us American companies?

Because with the scaling there comes a lot of interesting side effects which makes it more difficult then to switch to other alternatives. There’s for example the network effect that you want to go there, where many other people are because there’s the interesting content, they are locked in lock in effects so that it’s really difficult to leave certain platforms to follow the content from other platforms because they’re normally not based on general standards, they’re not interoperable…

So, all of that, all of those are then certain measures, measures which were consciously taken by the platforms to hinder competition and to make it more difficult for alternatives which are not oriented toward profit to enter the market.

00:11:57 Domen Savič / Citizen D

I want to stay at the genesis phase of this current situation that we find ourselves in…  So, so would you say that the political discourse or political agreement with these, as you said, mostly U.S. companies that were growing like a virus on a global scale sort of suited the decision makers in that these companies were at one point providing a service that maybe, not exactly, solved a lot of issues, but was very fitting also, for the decision-makers to sort of reach out to the public, to sort of communicate with them, to sort of have this benefit of this, pulse measurements of the public opinion through social media and other digital inventions?

And would you say that was the reason the regulators, left them alone for so long and did not address these issues that that are or that were popping up for the better part of the last ten to fifteen years?

00:13:21 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

I think that might be a relevant aspect… I mean social platforms and also US, American-owned social platforms are not bad as such, I would argue they’re also connecting people and are the basis of platforms where many social movements, liberal social movements, movements which are critical of power, are forming and have formed.

So, there are relevant communication space for many, many people, and they’re also relevant communication space for politicians because they can reach citizens, they interact with them, they can discuss matters with them and they, as you said, they get a grip on the pulse of society.

There are a lot of flaws, but it’s always important to me to emphasize this aspect that not everything is bad and what we need to look for is alternatives and not simply shutting the system down as such, because some argue at the moment for some kind of service shutdowns, there are particular countries which have even introduced Internet shutdowns as such, and I think there are concrete dangers for fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights, in particular freedom to expression, freedom to impart information, but also many other fundamental rights.

I think you’re right, that it is interesting that is and was interesting for politicians as a tool to communicate and as a tool to interact with society, and at the same time also from a regulatory perspective, it is, to a certain extent, it’s convenient to have a single point of contact, a single point of access, when you want to enforce certain rules.

So, in a decentralized Internet where there are many different institutions, many different companies, organizations all providing their own public spaces with their own rules, maybe even when the regulator finds that something is needs to be stopped a certain behavior, or that a certain measure needs to be enacted, enforcement becomes very, very complicated because you have so many different actors you need to address, and it’s just it’s just difficult and now when you don’t want to have, for example, a certain application to be provided to smartphones, there are only two companies you need to go to and when they don’t comply, you can issue fines and sanctions.

So, it makes regulation and the enforcement of rules in certain ways substantially easier when there is a concentration of power, and so there is only a very limited amount of counterparts you have to talk with when you want to enforce your laws online.

00:16:19 Domen Savič / Citizen D

Because looking back at the role of the Internet or the social networks, these big, mostly US-based companies in different say social movements or demonstration or protests… There’s always this “yes and no” position in terms of how useful these tools are in generating or keeping the social movements alive?

So, for example, looking way back, you know, the Arab Spring was one of the first maybe or one of the most important social movements or protests or waves of protests in the Middle East, where everybody in the beginning were saying, you know, social networks, digital platforms were, you know, harbingers of democratization in in those societies, right, Egypt and neighboring countries.

Then after a while, these claims were scaled back in terms of, “Oh, no, no, no, this wasn’t as big as it was reported before, the networks played some role, but people would still find a way if social media wasn’t present in the society”, and then you had, let’s say in the 21^st century, you had the wave of Russian propaganda and all of the sudden every aspect of social networks, of digital platforms that was before used as an argument for the platforms was now used as a critique of platform – they’re brainwashing people, they’re spreading disinformation and so on.

So, in terms of regulating this field, why do you think the regulators were so slow to catch up to the fact that, “OK, if we can spread the right message and are effective at doing that, somebody else could spread “the wrong message” and also be effective at that.

So, this, as I said before, this mythical neutral technology versus technology as a tool to effectively spread a particular political message that is fitting or isn’t fitting with the ruling structures?

00:19:24 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

I mean it’s a very good and very difficult question because it’s not only about what would be the best regulation, but it’s also about what are the motives of past legislators to not regulate so much.

Before the European Union became very active, in particular at the beginning of the 2020s, but also before with the GDPR, which was kind of the starting point of digital regulation of the new wave of digital regulation in Europe, my impression is, which is also still valid when it comes to current regulation like the Digital Service Act, that there is a certain hesitancy because we don’t really know what we want or legislators don’t know what they want, because there’s not a clear image of how good digital public space, where people meet and convene and can exercise their protest and can communicate political issues and stuff like that…

There’s not a clear answer how does it look like? There might be certain shared values on how it should not look like, what should not be there, like constant surveillance, which is currently the case.

Maybe the EU should have put more emphasis on what should not be there and then try to prohibit this completely. For example, as I said, the constant surveillance on digital platforms, the personal advertisement and stuff like that. They’re doing that now but slowly and obviously, also with a lot of opposition from industry.

So, I think what the past has shown is that social media can be a force for the good, that there are good things happening on social media, you’ve talked about the Arab Spring, but we can also talk about Black Lives Matter movement, we can talk about Fridays for future and the climate movements.

As such, I think many in particular movements which are somehow established with younger people, youth movements, they have certain roots also in social media and I’m not saying that without social media we had no protest or we had no movements. Obviously, there were social movements before and there will also be social movements when this kind of social media does not exist anymore, but we at least facilitated by the way social media works.

Also, apart from these big movements, social media companies or social media platforms are spaces where marginalized people meet, where people who are maybe living in the countryside and who are not aware of any other person who shares their certain characteristics and who feel really lonely, they can meet friends online and they build a community and feel to be part of a community and be empowered through these tools.

I don’t know about you, but also many in the civil society, many people who are organized in civil society and who are very critical of big tech are still using their platforms because certain aspects connecting people works and that’s I think something what also regulators have acknowledged in the past and they have seen there is something good and the platforms are doing.

At the same time, they’ve also seen the problems. But there was a lack of a vision of how it should look like when it shouldn’t look like as it is and I think this lack of vision is something which is still a problem. I don’t have the impression that the European Union and also the politicians at the top of the European Union, have a clear vision of a digital public space which is committed to the public good. They just look at this at the current commercial public space and say “That’s not the best we need to improve this, there needs to be a bit less hate speech, there needs to be a little less disinformation, but we don’t really know how it should look like, which is really a different model and which is an alternative”.

00:23:52 Domen Savič / Citizen D

If I can play a devil’s advocate a little bit to what you just said… so, if you think about the role of social media as a force for good, as platforms organizing, bringing people together and at the same time you wonder from a position of a digital activist… How much of this usage was actually the necessary evil?

If you talk about or if you look at the role of the general mainstream mass media, right… in terms of telling us what’s going on in the world, contextualizing the happenings around the world, focusing on different perspectives and let’s say social groups or minorities… you can clearly see that in the last few decades, they were basically asleep at the wheel, because of many problems from advertising to the whole profit model of mass media and similar stuff.

And then you had on the other side, you had this upcoming new actor in the field that offered as networks usually do, free, nice, happy, “just be yourself” type of agenda, but at the same time, you know, looking at it from today’s perspective, we were basically sheep brought to the slaughter because, you know the whole system was based in in surveillance capitalism, right? It was based on our personal data… And this was something that was always built with an intention of bringing together huge swaths of personal data and using it for purposes of advertising, of state security and stuff like that.

So, thinking about alternatives and thinking about the role of our, let’s say, functioning society… what are your thoughts on that? Where do we go from here? It’s 2025, you have uprisings of far-right movements literally all across the globe, you have these digital platforms playing favors with them. What’s next?

00:26:26 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

Yeah, I think… the law as it stands at the moment won’t save us, so there are many currently asking for very strict enforcement of the Digital Services Act against the US platforms which are now so aligned with the right-wing government in the United States, and I don’t think that that will be enough. It’s necessary, but it’s not enough.

What we need instead is, I think, a more active approach towards these platforms where the concentration of power as such is a problem. So, I would say, we really need to break up big tech, there shouldn’t be platforms which are that powerful. At the same time, this is not very realistic, because I don’t think the EU wants to escalate the conflict with the United States further at the moment.

What might be a possibility is a more active interoperability obligations for the platforms so that the effects so which lock users in at the moment, so they have to stay there because they don’t get the content anywhere else…that these effects are diminished.

A reform like that that could be implemented, for example in Digital services Act or the Digital Market Act, might be more realistic than a complete break up and I think what we need is alternatives and we have, I mean some alternatives like fediverse which conceptually I would say are really, really convincing.

I mean when it comes to ditch the public spaces committed for the public good, the way the fediverse works and also its most prominent service, Mastodon. I find it really convincing; there’s a lot of possibilities to experiment with certain governance structures to legitimize the rules which are governing these spaces by the users which are affected by the rules, which is, I think, a super nice and kind of a novel idea for internet communities, at least when it comes to social media communities.

So, I think there’s a lot of potential, but at the same time we can clearly observe that it doesn’t really fly, so there’s so much going on and still it’s not like all of our neighbors, at least not my neighbors here are using it… if at all they use any alternative, they use bluesky, which is of course… I mean it’s not-for-profit company, if I’m informed correctly and theoretically, it could also be decentralized, but it’s very difficult so it’s better, but it’s not really a super good alternative.

So, they preferably using this and why is that the case? I actually think mainly because of algorithmic creation, because, I mean, Mastodon prominently does not use any kind of algorithm apart from chronological sorting and I think that people want to have some creation over the content of social media platforms, they simply do not want to be online all the time to see what has been posted right now. And then I see it in my feed and when I come online at the end of the day, I don’t see any more what was posted.

In the beginning, I would say, one of the weaknesses which needs to be improved in the very concrete design of Mastodon and to enable such developments, I mean that’s not a very concrete proposal, maybe that’s also not the fix for everything, but there are also other flaws in the software as it is at the moment, which hinders some people from using it, and I think the software could be more accessible.

What we need for that I think is also funding, so there needs to be a European idea of how social media platforms should look like and then there needs to be public funding when we say it should not be profit oriented. When we say a society say, it should not be profit oriented but committed to the public good.

And I think with this funding, there comes more development, the tool becomes more attractive and then it attracts more users, more interesting content, which will then hopefully be a vicious circle in the best sense and to make the alternatives more prominent than the current established platforms.

What I don’t think the European Union or any other big stakeholder in this field should try, is simply to build up the next Facebook, the next Instagram, the next Twitter/X and try to copy and create some kind of European giant, just a European centralized platform which at a certain point might have the same issues when it comes to the concentration of power as we currently face towards the United States owned companies, but it needs to be an alternative, where decentralisation of power and autonomy in the sense of self-government of the users is somehow embedded at its core.

00:31:42 Domen Savič / Citizen D

So again, playing devil’s advocate, you focused on the platforms themselves, on the way they were built, on the way they used algorithmic content moderation to grow, gain influence… but what about the broad situation in a society, right?

Do you think part of the reason for their growth was also a sort of social optimism that was present during their period of expansion of growth, there was talk about technology saving  the world, there was talk of digital literacy, there was  digitalization happening all over the place… and now in 2025, we are facing, I’m not going to say completely, but very different reality in terms of what the tech is actually doing, how is it solving or addressing some issues and do you think that plays a factor that even if a new platform or a new way of communication literally drops from the sky tomorrow, the same thing that happened in the early 2000s will happen again?

00:33:23 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

Yeah, I mean that’s a fair point… I think that infrastructure which is organized in itself against… which has some mechanisms which try to make it more difficult to abuse power, which try to make it more difficult to concentrate power, that would be a feature which was not in mind 20 years ago, because you’re completely right the way the big tech platforms grew, it was very much founded on this idea of techno optimism that technology would somehow save the world.

This is also something we can currently observe when in conversations about artificial intelligence that this will somehow just like magic save the world and solve all our problems.

And I think what we have to acknowledge is that those are social technical systems, they’re embedded in society and society has its flaws and problems and there will also be reflected in the technology at the same time, we are aware of the last 20 to 25 years.

So, I hope that when we create something new, when we design something new, we are a bit smarter than we were 20 years ago and that we would try to at least to make it more difficult for the abuses we are currently experiencing to happen.

Again, so that gives me some optimism, that we’ve learned something from the past and that when we create something new, we our new designs are informed by what has happened in the past.

But at the same time, I don’t think that the new social media and alternative social media for the public good will not in itself solely fix the rise of authoritarian movements and I also think that it’s not only social media which is important or which is responsible for the rise of these right-wing authoritarian movements.

We can currently also observe sometimes in the discussion that one has the feeling if only big tech wasn’t there then all problems would be solved solved and Donald Trump would definitely not be president and the AfD in Germany would not have 20% or maybe would not even be in Parliament… I don’t think it’s that simple, I think it’s a very complex interdependence and I think that social media platforms have this certain share in the current rise also of authoritarian movements, but I think it’s also about bigger problems with society and we somehow… we all do this as activists because we are, I mean at least my understanding, we are political activists, fighting for more progressive future and our current field of application is digitalization. But we’re part of broader movements who are fighting for different and a more open society and that is something we… I mean we don’t need to fix just social media, but we need to work for a transformation of society which is more just, more open and also takes into the account the limitation of growth and climate justice and many different aspects.

I think that that is important to keep in mind that there are certain flaws in social media we can and should fix, but that this won’t be enough to fix society as a whole.

00:37:07 Domen Savič / Citizen D

And since we’re slowly wrapping up, I just want to return to the original reason for this episode, the Chaos Computer Club post… So who did you have in mind when or while you were collaborating, writing this call for a tech resilient against fascism cravings.

Was it focused on the decision makers, was it aimed at the tech sector, the end-users, the activists? Who do you wish would answer it?

00:37:54 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

So, the letter or the post which was published in the English version by the Case Computer Club in the German version also on our website at D64, it’s a joint effort of more than 20 civil society organizations in Germany and the very current trigger to write such a request letter are the coalition negotiations in Germany.

A new government is forming in Germany and we try to influence the way they’re doing tech policy… It’s directed towards decision makers at a political level and it has three main sections.

First is against surveillance, one is emphasising that protection, security for all people, in particular marginalized people, is necessary and the third one is on fostering democracy and democratic participation in the digital space. The very current trigger are these negotiations and they’re addressed towards policymakers in Germany.

But there is a reason why we published it in English as well, because we think that that the concrete proposals, we make are not only something for German policymakers, but for policymakers and also civil society organizations and even end-users around the world.

We think that surveillance as such is a constant problem, and I think it’s something which needs to be fixed on the policy level and which should not be individualized. That being said, there is some kind of resistance, which is also possible as an individual or as a civil society organization, the use of alternative tools which are not based in the US, the use of alternative platforms which are not based in the US but which are maybe self-governed, we’ve already talked about Mastodon.

Understanding the themes of this letter; protection and security for all, in particular marginalized people, democracy and democratic self-governance in the digital space and the commitment against surveillance is something which cannot only be fulfilled by policymakers, but something all of us can try to improve and can try to support in our daily lives, also as tech users.

00:40:28 Domen Savič / Citizen D

This is this is lovely but I just have one devil’s advocate question for the conclusion. Do you think all of this makes business sense? So do you think this can be a convincing argument for the industry that was built around for the better part of the last two decades on the exact opposite of what you just described?

00:41:01 Erik Tuchtfeld/ D64

I mean, I don’t think it’s really a business case we are describing in this letter but at the same time, the industry also needs to decide on what side of history they want to be, and currently with the alignment of big tech companies in the United States, with a fascist and authoritarian government, I think that those Members of industry which are not yet aligned with the right wing movement, they have to know that there is no neutrality in this situation.

So when they want to protect themselves from a government which seems to know no limits anymore, they need to change their products in a way that they are not a danger to users anymore, they simply must not collect any data which are not completely and absolutely necessary for their services, and I think being aware of this responsibility towards society, also as a company and also as industry is something which might in at least some cases, might respond to that, I have some hope.

I don’t think that that Meta will change its business model, I don’t think they Elon will read our letter and then will realize he should really step down and somebody else should take over. But I think that also in industry, that industry is not just one block which is completely aligned and which is homogeneous, but that they are diverse voices and with this call, we are trying to address those voices which are maybe currently in quiet opposition towards what is happening in the US at the moment and that they need to become more active and that they have a responsibility towards their users to protect them by making sure, for example, not to connect collect any data which can be abused by state authorities.

00:43:08 Domen Savič / Citizen D

This was great, thank you so much Erik, for dropping by, for, for sharing your thoughts and wisdoms, thank you, dear listener, for listening to yet another Citizen D podcast episode, where we publish an episode every month, thank you all and see you soon.