The impact of the new mediators of the digital age on freedom of expression

Abstract

New technologies have had an impact that is both positive and negative on freedom of speech, constitutional rights and democratic processes. It was positive in the early stages of development of the Internet and particularly in the early stages of Web 2.0, when the Internet was designed in a more participative and cooperative manner. In recent years, nevertheless, hierarchical processes of information and data organisation have appeared through the large technological companies that monopolise the distribution of information and opinion and which are the new mediators between the users and the public sphere. Freedom of speech is currently constrained by these mediators, namely the large technological companies that control the communicative processes. This paper analyses the role that these new mediators are developing, taking into account their impact on freedom of speech and on the configuration of the public sphere in democratic systems. Two elements stand out among the new mediators: the dialectic of freedom of speech is shifting from the public to the private sphere and from the state to the global sphere. These are two elements that together help fuel the power of the new mediators and weaken the state's capacity for regulation and control. But in the ecosystems developed by technology companies, the new mediators exercise a power that is not strictly private, since they occupy and monopolise a public sphere. In the environment created by the new mediators, freedom of expression becomes a mere commercial product, so that information and opinion are transformed into ephemeral merchandise organised through the algorithms of Internet applications, which decide their impact and their incidence in the public sphere. These algorithms have been created with an economic purpose and promote fake news and radicalisation to attract the attention of the public and thus generate greater profit. The new mediators, by promoting fake news in democratic contexts (without trying to impose a specific narrative, as in dictatorial ones), generate a destructive tension about reality. Instead of contributing like the traditional media to the social construction of reality or as in dictatorships to the reconstruction of reality based on the interests of the dominant oligarchy, they are causing the destruction of reality, that is, of a shared social perception of reality. Among the many measures that can be adopted, those related to competition law stand out, with institutional measures through regulators that may avert an even greater concentration of power. However, rather than restrictions, it is openness that is desirable; open technology that puts an end to the closed-off, hierarchical nature of applications. Telephone communication, for example, is open and allows mobile phone operators to operate, making global communication possible, and the same is true for e-mail servers. Communication applications that are currently closed-off (WhatsApp and Telegram, for example) should also be open, intercommunicable and managed by a plurality of operators.