According to a joint report by Deloitte and the Allensbach Institute of Demography, the development of cyberspace has reached a level at which the systems can threaten democratic processes, reports Mandiner.
The Allensbach Demoskopiai Institute has published this year's cyber security report prepared jointly with Deloitte. The authors of the report try to reveal all the security risks appearing in cyberspace, and although the study was prepared specifically for Germany, many instructive conclusions can be drawn from the document...
...It is true not only for Germany, but also in general that social media pose a demonstrable threat to democratic processes. More than 55 percent of German politicians fear that social media will negatively influence opinion formation, which is essentially the basis of democratic processes.
In particular, fake news that spreads particularly quickly on such platforms is a danger.
Another, more insidious problem with social media than fake news is the issue of opinion bubbles formed on the platforms: whoever gets into one, there is a good chance that he will be cut off from the opportunity to participate in real public discourse. Allensbach has come to the conclusion that some of the users are so deeply "absorbed" by this opinion bubble that they are not even able to access opinions outside of it later. The vast majority of German politicians believe that opinion bubbles significantly endanger democratic processes.
Allensbach revealed a similarly worrying phenomenon when discussing the dumping-like spread of hate speech. Many people can publish hateful content on the Internet In Germany, 15 percent of the corporate sector and 49 percent of the political community have already encountered such a phenomenon. A solution to this could be, on the one hand, strengthening the guidelines of the information authority, and on the other hand, increasing citizens' awareness in this area...
Allensbach considers balanced regulation to be important in addition to official supervision and increasing user awareness. It should be noted that the world's most ambitious and at the same time strictest data protection regulation was recently adopted in the European Union. It was recently revealed that the implementation of the GDPR is being hindered exactly where it is most needed: in Ireland.
Most of the global tech companies (such as Facebook) have their European locations here, which means that anyone in Europe who wants to hold Facebook accountable in any way would most likely be able to do so in Ireland - if the data protection authority there would assist with this.
Source: Mandiner.hu
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