A handful of prominent social media companies have accumulated power rivaling that of many states, and increasingly use this power to undermine democracy and fundamental rights.

Companies like Meta and TikTok wield immense political power through content moderation and curation on their platforms. Their choices shape the information spaces in which hundreds of millions of users in the European Union, and billions worldwide, form political opinions. They also heavily influence how users exercise fundamental rights such as freedom of association and expression. Content moderation and curation decisions can exacerbate the effects of discriminatory biases, contribute to organized political violence, and potentially influence elections.

While content moderation and curation policies have never been perfect, social media companies and their leaders have recently taken steps to purposefully weaken anti-discrimination protections. For example, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram, Facebook, and other Meta platforms would, in effect, permit more discriminatory content against the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants.

Similarly, while social media companies and their leaders have long lobbied against platform regulation, they have recently begun to support more overt and hostile efforts to interfere with democratic governance of technology. Along with millions in political expenditures and other contributions in support of US President Donald Trump, they have aligned themselves with the President’s anti-regulatory agenda, including the administration’s opposition to the European Union’s platform rules. The Trump administration has demanded the repeal, amendment, or weakened enforcement of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and other regulations, threatening to impose larger trade tariffs and withdraw NATO support during a time of war in Europe.

This interference goes beyond specific regulations. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) and creator of DOGE in the US federal government, contributed to significant democratic backsliding in the US. In Europe, Musk’s public support on X for the Alternative for Germany, a right-wing extremist organization, may have contributed to its recent parliamentary gains by boosting its visibility.

The openly antidemocratic and discriminatory turn of social media companies and their leaders demands an immediate and proportionate EU policy response.

Existing policies cannot solve these problems

Alone, EU platform regulations like the DSA cannot neutralize the threats prominent social media companies pose to democracy and fundamental rights. Large fines for noncompliance are too often brushed off as the cost of doing business by companies with massive revenues and are unlikely to meaningfully change their behavior.

Along with platform regulations, EU institutions and Member States have begun to fund open-source software development, in part to support the emergence of alternatives to Big Tech products and services. Examples include the European Commission’s Next Generation Initiative and Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency. In some cases, public funding supports the development of decentralized social networks like Mastodon, which can serve as alternatives to commercial networks like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter/X.

Mastodon, Bluesky, and other decentralized social networks not only provide alternatives to Big Tech platforms but are also more conducive to the protection of democracy and fundamental rights. Users encounter a multitude of options for customized content moderation and curation, as well as interoperable apps and account hosts. Bluesky, for example, empowers users to create content feeds, block lists, and account and post labelers that other users can follow or subscribe to. Typically, labelers are used to limit the visibility of unwanted content and accounts, though they can also serve purposes like user-led account verification.

Decentralized content moderation and curation are far from a panacea, as many users expect organizations running platforms to take greater responsibility for user safety. Trans users have objected to Bluesky’s decisions not to ban a user known for anti-trans writing and harassment on Bluesky. Black users also experienced marginalization in Bluesky’s early content moderation decisions. Nevertheless, overlapping sources of control over content moderation and curation make it difficult for one person or organization to impose harmful policies on an entire network’s user base.

Moreover, a general rejection of surveillance advertising — the main source of social media companies’ revenues — drastically limits the accumulation of profits and personal wealth that could influence politicians.

However, public funding programs tend not to provide the financial support necessary for decentralized networks to thrive and compete with platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Both the overall amount of public funding and the size of individual grants are dwarfed by prominent social media companies’ annual budgets and staff salaries. Relatively small, one-off grants with irregular milestone-based disbursements can render full-time work on decentralized networks financially challenging. Eligibility criteria can exclude key actors and projects, such as user-facing applications, long-term costs like content moderation, and nontechnical functions like marketing. Yet these are all essential to a social network’s success.

Nevertheless, public funding is irreplaceable. In the absence of surveillance advertising, other funding sources, such as crowdfunding, philanthropic support, and private investment, do not make up the difference. Although Bluesky has received millions of dollars in startup venture capital funding, its long-term business plans, such as a proposed subscription service, remain untested.

A new approach to public funding is necessary. It must be capable of fostering a thriving and sustainable decentralized social networking ecosystem that attracts users from prominent social media platforms.

A public service social media

A more effective strategy would model public funding for decentralized social networks on public service media. This funding would be more substantial and stable, promoting sustainable growth. Conditioning funding on commitments to public service values would help to ensure decentralized social networks safeguard democracy, fundamental rights, and other public interests over the long term.

Sustainable funding

In part, public funding to individual organizations and projects must be sufficient to support regular, full-time work on decentralized social networks. Insufficient funding forces most developers and administrators to work on a part-time basis, often as volunteers, which limits a network’s progress. Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency offers an example by hiring open-source software maintainers as public employees.

Public funding must also support the full spectrum of activities and functions necessary for a social network’s success. These include work on user-facing applications and their interfaces, technical work outside of research and development, such as content moderation, and nontechnical work like marketing. Even the most sophisticated apps will fail if no one knows they exist or if they are riddled with bugs and spam.

Overall, the amount of public funding available must be at least somewhat comparable to the budgets of large social media companies. Without comparable funding, decentralized networks will struggle to achieve feature parity with large commercial networks and support the desired user growth.

Prior to the current AI spending craze, Meta invested around $2 to $10 billion USD in research and development annually, with similar amounts allocated to cover a combination of other expenses, such as infrastructure and marketing. In its pre-Musk years, Twitter invested approximately $1 billion USD in research and development and several times as much on other business costs.

Thus, a conservative starting point for public funding for decentralized social networks would be €2 billion a year, with €1 billion for research and development, and another €1 billion for costs like marketing and infrastructure.

Though €2 billion is far greater than the amounts allocated to existing public funding programs, it is a tiny fraction of what European countries spend on public service media each year to support healthy information ecosystems. The growing severity of the threats large social networks pose to democracy and fundamental rights justifies greater expenditures to mitigate these threats.

This raises the question: Who pays, and how?

While public funding could be institutionalized in various ways, a starting point supported by many policy experts and companies would be the creation of an EU-level European Sovereign Tech Fund. Envisioned as a source of support for open-source software projects generally, this entity could provide dedicated funding to decentralized social networks, which are mostly built on open-source software. OpenForum Europe has outlined several legal options for EU institutions to establish this Fund.

Now is the time to establish a European Sovereign Tech Fund, as policymakers negotiate the EU’s next seven-year budget. It may be possible to draw initial financing from the proposed €409 billion European Competitiveness Fund, which is intended to promote the EU’s digital leadership and technological sovereignty.

Governance

As in public service media, the funding of decentralized social networks must be conditioned upon adherence to public service values to ensure recipients safeguard democracy, fundamental rights, and other public interests. Public service values generally include universal accessibility, quality and distinctiveness, fostering a shared social identity while respecting diversity, creativity and innovation, and accountability.

Depending on how public funding is institutionalized, these values can be adapted to decentralized social networks through regulations or other applicable policies. For example, the value of identity formation and respect for diversity could be operationalized as a requirement to provide the tools and technological affordances necessary for community-building within a larger network. These features have enabled the emergence of the Blacksky community within and alongside Bluesky. Blacksky users benefit from access to the larger Bluesky network as well as specialized content moderation and curation features that protect and connect Black users.

Unlike the fines large social media companies shrug off as the cost of doing business, the threat of losing crucial public funding would help to ensure recipients respect and implement public service values. As in public service media, institutional safeguards would be necessary to deter detrimental political interference based on this financial leverage.

Given the severity of the threats social media companies pose to democracy and fundamental rights in the EU and beyond, policy responses cannot merely tinker around the edges. Successful public service social media would address a root cause of these problems — the centralized control over large, commercial social networks — and protect democracy and fundamental rights more effectively.