This was a webinar called, “The big tech threats to democracy, challenging the oligarchy from Musk to meta” which was hosted by Another Europe. This article consists of the notes I took at the meeting and while I was hoping to improve my notes on the speakers contributions by reviewing the video, I am unsure if this will become available. It also consists of the notes I used for my contribution as I was asked to speak from the floor. I made this article because I think it was the first time I argued for the need for joining the single market to participate in the EU’s democracy shield and digital market regulation regime. This article has been back dated to the day after the day of occurrence. I have tried to ensure that comments that became obvious or were impacted by events after the seminar, are presented as foot notes.For more, see below or overleaf …
I started by referencing Vance’s speech to the Munich security conference, which I commented on on this blog and noted the hypocrisy and arrogance, in their refusal to accept that Hate speech should be suppressed and that 1st Amendment is not international law. Their hypocrisy is visible by their attacks, contrary to the 1st Amendment, which restricts government action, on the free speech of their opponents in the USA, but at least they aren’t burning books[1]. They, it seems, are banning books in schools and libraries at an unprecedented scale.
A conclusion from that speech is that free speech is for the rich and their messages are to be carried on the unfettered byte waves of the US social media companies. They demand a freedom to pollute the politics of everywhere, looking to achieve parity with Russia’s influencing of the US general election and the Brexit referendum.
While the Russia report into Russia’s interference in the UK democratic politics has been published there remain questions as to how comprehensive it is/was and yet it excoriated MI5 and its efforts to defend the UK[2]. One problem in particular is that those, on right and left who benefited from these foreign state actions have covered up, suppressed and minimised the impact of the report and the interference.
Elections must be free and fair, and not subject to foreign funded disinformation campaigns.
Another feature of the US administration contention, partly because of its capture by the oligarchs, is they resent the anti-monopolies regulation of the EU, together with their fining[3] of Microsoft, Intel and Apple. They resent the GDPR, the DSA, and the Democracy shield.
In addition many of them now fear the AI[4] Act, imperfect as it would seem to be.
The UK had a reputation of having a competent public interest orientated competition and monopoly regulator[5], but with Reeves’ s new instructions and the appointment of a new boss, we need to question its direction of travel. Reeves’s instructions to all regulators are to prioritise growth over safety, human rights and the public interest.
We can see in the case of Facebook, that the initial appointment and now replacement of Nick Clegg indicates a change of direction, from informed, arguably insider regulatory co-operation to Trumpian independence from Europe’s regulation.
I suggest that the obvious UK response to this threat to our political independence and democracy is to rejoin the single market in order to get the collective protection of the digital economy acts and participate in a collective defence against the US social media companies and foreign intelligence services.
The government response is going to be less than this,
The UK rejoined Horizon under the Tories; are we just rejoining one programme at a time[6][7]. When will it become clear that we need a seat at the table, and votes and vetoes on the Council.
I then turned to issues of employee protection. I spoke of GMB’s organising efforts in Apple and Amazon, and its unfortunately loss of the recognition ballot in the Amazon Coventry warehouse, despite two strikes. The good news is that Staten Island in NY warehouse won its ballot & Tesla Sweden have also been on strike.
ooOOOoo
These are the notes of the speeches made by the platform.
The first speaker was Bram Vanken who is a researcher and campaigner specialising in Big Tech and economic and social justice at Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), a campaign group working to expose and challenge the privileged access and influence enjoyed by corporations and their lobby groups in EU policy making.
As noted above, I was hoping to have the video available to more accurately reflect what they said. I note that Bran exposed the contempt with which monopoly regulation is held, by quoting one of them with, “Competition is for losers” . He also asked how many fines had been issued under the digital services act? The answer was and remains none[8].
He alleged that there had been an increase[9] in lobbying, despite the attempts to clean up EU politics after Qatargate[10][11].
Bran identified that there was a split in Big Tech’s approach to politics between the committed far-right plutocrats and the merely opportunistic. Given Amazon’s anti-worker stance, it would be interesting to see where Bezos stands as he now owns the Washington Post which he silenced over recommendations for the US election and Facebook, who were late in joining Trump’s party are now making large payments to Trump.
He also identified a fear that the EU are back pedalling, first on climate change regulation, but also on digital regulation that the DSA/DMA and even the GDPR are chips in the Trade War bargaining table. [12]
He articulated a need to defend democracy against the Oligarchs, both US & Russian, a need to consider break-ups, stronger lobbying transparency laws and the need to build movements.
He was followed by Isabelle Schömann who is Deputy General Secretary at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). She discussed ways Big Tech undermines workers’ rights and how the labour movement can mobilise transnationally to successfully challenge the power of multinational corporations.
She spoke of the Platform Directive, which enhances the EU and member state labour law systems by introducing a number of concrete advances[13] which include a presumption of employment for platform workers, clearer rules on algorithmic management and data rights, stronger collective labour rights, and robust enforcement safeguards. She also spoke of need for the GDPR’s freedom from profiling[14][15], and also welcomed AI as an innovation; it clearly is but whether its in the public interest due to its resource consumption and the scofflaw nature of its designers and owners is another question.
[1] The attack on the free speech within the US is clearly much worse than in Feb 2025, the attacks on Harvard, various law firms, CBS and the firing of Steven Colbert all illustrate an ultra partisan right wing oligarch adjacent administration. See the linked Guardian article for their contemporaneous actions against books in schools and libraries.
[2] The story is told well at bylines times, https://bylinetimes.com/2025/02/13/russian-interference-british-politics-sergei-westminster-spy-ring/ One big problem is that those, on right and left, who benefited from these foreign state actions have covered up, suppressed and minimised the impact of the report and the interference.
[3] And now Amazon France for illegal workplace surveillance.
[4] I am not convinced it’s the next big thing.
[5] Monopolies charge too much and produce too little.
[6] UK in a changing Europe is running a divergence report and reports that from Q4 24 to Q2 25, there have been 21 actions of realignment; I plan to write something on this.
[7] I commented on the great reset meeting, calling it an unfinished draw. See https://davelevy.info/brexit-reset-or-stall/
[8] There are 14 live investigations against X/Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, Ali-baba and Temu. These had been started eight days earlier. 6 Aug 2025
[9] While polishing this article for posting, I reviewed CEO’s blog and found this article, https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/02/eus-lobby-league-table documenting the EU lobbying efforts.
[10] See Qatar corruption scandal at the European Parliament at wikipedia
[11] I wonder if we can know how much money Big Tech spends on lobbying, in particular the Labour Party, but I suspect the majority of it is through think-tanks such as the Tony Blair Institute, or direct donations to MPs. , this, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/labour-conservative-party-donations-2023-spending-analysis/ from open democracy in March 2024 documents some of the donations but documents the impact on the two main parties and does not focus on the big tech donations.
[12] It seems they have managed to retain sovereignty during the negotiations for the EU/US trade deal signed in July.
[13] The TUC have developed a Workers Charter for AI, see https://davelevy.info/on-ai-at-gmb-25/
[14] Freedom from profiling primarily addressed in Article 22 in the GDPR is an essential protection against Big Tech and their next evolution, now thanks to the Data User and Access Act weakened in the UK.
[15] The French data protection supervisor has since fined Amazon €21m for illegal workplace surveillance. See https://davelevy.info/thoughts-from-gmb-25-on-privacy-law/