Joint Statement for More Democracy on Large Platforms

A coalition from civil society is proposing ten measures to enforce fundamental rights, rule of law principles and democratic control in the digital public sphere. In a joint statement, we call for Switzerland to finally tackle the regulation of online platforms.

Today, a large part of our democratic public sphere manifests itself on private platforms - and we can neither understand how this happens and what influence it has on our society, nor can we effectively protect ourselves from manipulation and discrimination or counter phenomena such as hate speech or the spread of disinformation.

With the following ten measures, we show where political and legal changes are necessary from the perspective of civil society:

  1. Data access for research, civil society and journalism

  2. Risk assessments and auditing

  3. Procedure: Justification of deletions, complaints system, arbitration procedure

  4. Enforcement of rules

  5. Self-determined use of online platforms

  6. Reducing the risk of discrimination

  7. Criminal Code as a guideline, but expand to include gender discrimination

  8. Identification of political and commercial advertising and the source of funding

  9. Limiting disinformation and labeling (social) bots

  10. Strengthening digital information and news literacy

Read entire statement

This joint statement was led by the Alliance Digitale Mitglieder Digitale Gesellschaft, Algorithmwatch CH and Stiftung Mercator Schweiz.