Dear AEGEE-People,
Europe is facing complex and difficult problems. The euro crisis has unvealed that the European Union is suffering from severe democratic and institutional deficits that endangers the whole European project. Furthermore the prism scandal has shown that Europe needs strong institutions in order to defend or common values in the global arena.
However, scholars and politicians claim that a strong, democratic Europe is not possible. They claim that a European public sphere where a European opinion forming process could take place does not exist. AEGEE can demonstrate that this claim is not true. Therefore it is time to change something, it is time to launch ‘The European Democracy Project’.
The only instrument existing at the moment to prove that a European decision-making process is possible is the European Citizens Initiative. It is an instrument that connects European citizens for a common political goal. AEGEE, as the only pure European student organization, should use the ECI – despite all discussed weaknesses of this instrument – to show in a visionary campaign that European Democracy is possible. A successful ECI, promoted by AEGEE, could show that the involvement of European citizens should be a corrective to adjust wrong decision taken by a small group of national leaders.
Nowadays, European citizens face paternalism especially when it comes to great economical or political project. The claim is that an average citizen of the EU is not capable of understanding such things well enough in order to make sophisticated and rational decisions. However, on the other side we witness how heavy economical and political interests inflict our lives in an uncomforting, sometimes disturbing way since the great majority of the decision makers in high political ranks either lack themselves knowledge of what we, the people, need or face our needs with arrogance for a “higher” purpose. The outcomes are protests such as Blockupy, unrest in Spain or Greece, even in Stockholm and – the most famous one in the recent newspapers – the Gezi protests in Turkey (since Turkey is greatly intertwined politically and economically with the EU the effects in this country should also be taken into account). It is our aim to strive for equilibrium between economical/political and basic peoples interests, for the possibility to fill the term “democracy” with more life also between elections. Especially for the younger generation the decisions made today will be of large importance for their future well-being.
Of course it is important to have a specific topic for an ECI, which makes it possible to really change something. Another problem is to address particularly those people who are inflicted by such a change the most – hence, the ECI about more democracy in the EU must reach also the younger generation. Since it may be difficult to raise awareness of such an abstract topic of more involvement of citizens in EU politics the idea is to first gain attention with another ECI about a more youth related topic before the second major one will be initiated.
We think that an ECI regarding the social media/ prism discussion could be especially interesting, as it upsets many European and also the European Commission (Viviane Reding) and the European Parliament (see Link 1 and 2 below) have an high interest to change something. However, they would need a strong rear cover from the European citizens in order to have strong position against the opposition of several national governments. This and the reasons stated above are why we officially want to ask the Commission with an ‘OpenFacebook’ ECI to launch an anti-trust procedure against Facebook.
The reason why Facebook is able to collect such a flood of information and can force its clients to reveal this information to Facebook and the whole ‘Facebook’ community is the simple application of a so-called vendor-lock-in that makes a customer dependent on a vendor. Facebook is a closed network which means that it does not allow clients of other social networks to get in contact with facebook-users. If a customer wants to take part in the social life of the web 2.0 he has to become a member of Facebook and accept Facebook’s conditions. This undermines the competition in the social media market as the lock-in costs create barriers to market entry. That a competition between social media is possible shows the example of diaspora or friendica. In these social networks you can easily contact users of other social medias, just like you can send an e-mail from one e-mail provider to another.
Antitrust and competition affairs are an exclusively responsibility of the European Commission. Europe has strong and powerful institutions to regulate companies that are applying monopolistic policies to undermine market competition. A European Citizens Initiative, launched by AEGEE, could therefore show that it is possible to change European politics if you have strong institutions and a good connection to and between the people.
If you wish to be part of this project just let us know. We are happy about everybody who wants to help! Together we can change something! You find more information in the attached program description and in the links below. If you would like to get deeper explanation, please read the attached PDF file below.
MORE INFO HERE: The European Democracy Project (PDF file)
With best regards,
Thilo, Armin and Ivan
Link 1: http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/reding/multimedia/news/2013/06/20130612_en.htm
Link 2: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-eu-usasecurity-idUSBRE95I17S20130619
Link 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock_in
Link 4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens%27_Initiative
Launching an ECI is not a bad idea, but this topic is not really AEGEE-related. By the way the most AEGEE-related ECI, Fraternité 2020 is still very unsuccesful and shows the incompetence of this “democratic” tool.
I agree with Robert that the topic is not very much AEGEE-connected, although AEGEE is very diverse and you can propose mostly any initiative. Actually, I don’t see the connection between data protection and the idea that Facebook is avoiding competition (at least, it’s not clearly explained). If you don’t like the feature of Facebook or not allowing non-members to contact you, then don’t join Facebook. There are many other social media to choose, where is the lack of competition? Another thing would be if you propose to implement bigger data protection in Facebook. This would be more interesting.
So far ECIs are not reaching a lot of support and I don’t see this topic (the one about competition) would be able to mobilize enough people. I think there are other means which you can use to propose this idea to the and that are much less time consuming than an ECI. And I’m not sure if the best approach is a policy affecting the EU, while this is a worldwide issue (just as Facebook is).
I’m honestly not sure how I feel about launching this initiative – and I agree a bit with the two comments raised above about the lack of connection between AEGEE and this issue in particular – and the fact that we are talking about 2 different things when we speak of data protection and competition within Social Media…
If you get enough people to support your idea, sure, why not go for it – even though the ECI may not be the most efficient solution for us.
To be fair, regarding Fraternite 2020 – they are also not really asking for something concrete so maybe that’s a part of it’s lack of success (more money for youth and erasmus is not really anything new or concrete)
But what I would like to point out is that I was quite confused about the title of this post ‘the european democracy project’ and what the post was really about. If you do want to make this project I suggest you really change the name of the project to the ECI Open FB or something – like you posed the question.
When i heard the European democracy project i thought it would be something like a big AEGEE project on democracy, what it is, how to be more involved, how to make Europe more democratic etc etc etc. This kind of stuff. I would have been more interested in that.
Dear all,
thank you for all your comments and feeback. Yes, maybe we should make some points in the proposal more clear, sorry for that. Olimpia, according the question about how this is related to ‘European Democracy’ Ivan will upload a more detailed program description soon. That’s indeed a little bit more complex, but maybe it will be intersting for you. The the title of the ECI itself would of course be ‘OpenFacebook’ or sth similar and just concentrate on this. The connection to European Democracy for the moment a more academic/ theoretical one.
The detailed program description will make it also more clear why/ how this topic is AEGEE related. However, Jorge is also right by pointing out that AEGEE as a forum can be related to nearly every topic. Also environment is not a pure AEGEE topic. However, as international policy coordination is needed to solve this problem, Europe should have a common policy/ position to achieve sth on the global level. For this reason AEGEE should absolutely be active on this field. That’s similar with data protection and big global/ transnational enterprises like facebook, google, microsoft ect. It doesn’t make much sense if Germany or Spain improve their data protection laws if facebook is storing all its data in Irland. You need therefore a European apporach.
About the connection between data protection and competition: facebook is avoiding/ undermining competition in order to be able to impose its system/ model of social media on its clients. For example: everything that you write and do within facebook is saved on a central facebook server. This makes it easy for facebook to analyze all your private data (to ‘improve advertisment techniques’). However, that makes it also very easy for the secret services (or also criminal hackers) to access this data, as it is all saved on a centralised source. It is important to understand that this doesn’t have to be like this. Take the examples of old-school e-mails: there you can choose if you want to keep your mails on a server or if you want to download them to a program like thunderbird. The same would be in theory also possible for social networks, as the examples of friendica or diaspora show. However, facebook is preventing such a development, as it would be much more difficult to access the data. Suddently it would be saved on your German or Spanish laptop instead of the Irish server. Stricter German data protection rules would be applied. Or again with the e-mail example: if you have a hotmail account and you keep your mails in the web (so on the microsoft server) then it is easy for microsoft to access them. If you download them on your computer then its nearly impossible.
Let me use another example to understand what I mean: Maybe you remember that some time ago ‘Multi-Messenger’ for ICQ, Skype, AOL ect. existed. As you could easily contact members of other messenger program you were able to choose the messenger provider that suits you (and for example your data protection preferences) most. You didn’t loose any contacts when you changes the messenger provider. This changed when skype became the most important messenger and was bought by microsoft. Today it is impossible to contact skype users with a multi-messenger. If you wanted to keep in contact with skype users you need a skype account. Microsoft could do this because skype had already a dominating position in the market. By closing skype to other users they where able to undermine competition in the market. Today ICQ doesn’t exist anymore. The same is for example true for the German social media ‘StudiVZ’. After a critical mass of users changed from studiVZ to facebook, you had to shut down studiVZ completely, because it didn’t had any use anymore when you can just contact 50% of your frinds and not 100%.
Whereas a lack of competition in messenger providers is bad but not really a catastrophe, it becomes much more servere problem for social media. Facebook is trying to save your whole life on its server. Just try to delete all the messanges that you wrote within the last year (not to say since you joined facebook…). It will take you hours, if not days. With Thunderbird you can delete them within 10 seconds if you want to. If you want to know how (in the long run) this data could be abused, just read 1984 by George Orwell.
To underline once again the connection between data protection and competition: Yes, one way would be to improve data protection laws. That is what the Comissioner Vivien Redding is trying since years without big success (because of the opposition of Iralnd and Great Britain). Even if she would be successful to bring through a new directive it is likely that lobby groups in IRL and GB would be able to delete the most important parts of the directive. Competition can achieve data protection in a much more efficient and justice way. If you . like Jorge, don’t care about facebook’s data protection then just join it. I would join another social media that suits my data protection preferences more. Still we could keep easily in contact, our ‘friendship’ will not be canceled. This way Jorge and me are both happy (just facebook will not be…), Jorge doesn’t have to suggest me anymore ‘to just stay out of the club, if I don’t like it’.
Let me also add another long term implication of ‘closed’ social medias like facebook: as the architecture of facebook allows it the us/ western government easily to control the internet and its users, other autocratic states (like russia or china) are building up alternative social medias. There will be more and more states where you will not be able to use facebook because state athorities forbid it to you. It will be therefore much more complicated to contact people from this regions, every region will have its own, closed scoial media. However, I am deeply convinced that only a deep and intensive interconnectivity between people can guarantee peace in the world. That is also what the history of Europe has tought us. Different, closed social medias will raise barriers between people and therefore promote conflict and maybe war. And, Olimpia, this is also where theories of democracy come into play.
I hope it got a little bit clearer no. Don’t hesitate post any further critics, ideas, comments. If we should in the end decide to do something, this feedback can help a lot to make it successful.
Best,
Thilo
Hey guys,
Great initiative!
I just attented a Summer School and Conference about Internet Governance, therefore I’m pretty much into this topic now. And what we realized at these events: Like some comments said, this is not an topic of AEGEE at the moment – but it should be! The internet is not just a topic for nerds, it is the basic medium for all communication, business and even democratic processes in the future! And so far, almost not youth is visible there. Therefore it’s time to change it! And like you say, these initiatives can only be done European wide, national goverments can’t do anything about this.
And since I have a technical background and some knowledge in this area, I could be maybe of some help – don’t hesitate to contact me. Ivan knows me personally already
Best,
Martin
Hey Martin, welcome on board then!
At the end of the first comment you can find now also the detailed description of the more general ‘Democracy Project’!
Dear readers and commentators!
Concerning the first comments and Thilo’s explanation we will add some more information to the published text soon since the connection between a FB antitrust movement and the EU democracy issue is neither obvious nor straightforward.
You’ll receive a re-edited text with a passage clarifying these details here within the next few days.
Stay curious!
Armin