Shaping our digital public spaces – and why democracy depends on them

The impact of Big Tech on democracy has never been more apparent and regulators are beginning to take notice. In recent months, the European Union has passed two of the most significant pieces of legislation aimed at regulating Big Tech companies and their impact on polarization. On the heels of these policy advances, Ashoka social entrepreneur Anna-Lena von Hodenberg - founder of HateAid - won precedent herself: a German court ruled that Facebook (now known as Meta) is responsible for removing “identical elements and similar basic illegal hate speech” from their platform once detected. To learn more, Julia Kloiber of SuperrrLab spoke with Anna-Lena about the future of the policy technology in Europe and what it could mean for democracy.

Julia Kloiber: Anna-Lena, you started HateAid in 2018 to support victims of digital violence. Can you tell us about the case of German politician Renate Künast and her quest for justice in the face of social media defamation?

Anna-Lena von Hodenberg: For seven years, a popular meme has been circulating on Facebook: a photo of Renate Künast above a quote attributed to her. The problem was that the quote was wrong. The meme has been reported many times by different people, including the politician herself. In some cases, Meta even added the message: "This has been verified and is false". The platform therefore recognized that it was defamation, a criminal offense, but the meme was still there. At the time, Meta's notice and take down procedure required the victim to go through the platform and report each meme one by one. But the meme was being shared so frequently that it literally took a lifetime to do.

Kloiber: How did you get Meta to fix the problem? And what does the result mean for all of us?

von Hodenberg: There are different instruments you can use to regulate Big Tech, and one of them is litigation. So we filed a libel suit against Meta. Overall, this case has shown how successful we can be in defending users' rights in court. But what we specifically got with this verdict is that Meta is now obligated to proactively find and remove all "identical and similar" instances of this content. We have proven that Meta has the technology to filter out all identical memes and remove them when they are not, for example, used for journalistic content. They are also supposed to look for them proactively, removing any obviously illegal content. Remember, they self-assessed this content as illegal. If they do not comply, they will be fined 250,000 euros and must pay Renate Künast 10,000 euros in damages.

More generally, this verdict means that when you are the victim of digital abuse, the onus on you to fix the problem has been lifted. It is now up to the platform to remove illegal content. Meta is appealing the verdict, of course, but we are prepared to defend it in any instance.

Kloiber: On a personal note, how did you come to this job? What inspiration or life experience led to it?

von Hodenberg: When I was growing up in Germany, the legacy of the Holocaust was very present. The sense of responsibility to never let this happen again was ingrained in me from an early age. After Trump's election and Brexit, we have seen people, especially right-wing extremists, learn to manipulate discourse on the internet, to use digital violence and algorithms to silence people, drive them out of public discourse and spread misinformation. People with fake accounts could now change the course of the election. I was shocked when research was first published on this and thought of Nazi Germany, where propaganda was the key to gaining power. Here we go again: the propaganda used to silence those who oppose it. I'm passionate because this is truly one of the greatest threats to our democracies, and it's time to defend them.

Kloiber: Do you have any advice on fending off Big Tech, for anyone reading this?

von Hodenberg: It's so important to discuss the issue, to make people think, "Yes, it's unfair that as an individual, the burden of dealing...