For years, we have been convinced, and with good reason, that we rely too heavily on a handful of American platforms. That the European public discourse takes place on infrastructure designed in California, governed by its laws, and tuned by algorithms that reward indignation, is a genuine problem of autonomy and democracy. Hence the increasingly strong impetus to build European alternatives: our own networks, our own servers, our own rules. The desire is legitimate, although it warrants a close analysis of what we acquire when we purchase sovereignty, because changing one's skin is not the same as healing what lies beneath.
A social network does not become democratic by relocating from California to Frankfurt. It may be hosted in Europe, comply with European regulations, and boast verified users, while simultaneously maintaining opaque moderation, political bias, and a hostile environment for certain voices. The location of the servers dictates the governing law and the storage of data. It conveys nothing regarding whether that platform protects pluralism, moderates with transparency, or treats all published content with equality. These are two distinct questions, and we have long conflated them: we believe that by resolving the former we resolve the latter, which is not the case.
La Unión Europea ha puesto la soberanía tecnológica en el centro de su agenda, y las razones son sólidas. Depende de proveedores no europeos para más del ochenta por ciento de sus infraestructuras digitales clave, y esa dependencia es un riesgo estratégico que urge reducir. Nada que objetar. El problema aparece cuando la palabra «soberanía» empieza a funcionar como si fuera, ella sola, una garantía democrática. Que una infraestructura sea europea es un dato jurídico y geopolítico. No es un certificado de pluralismo. Y sin embargo se está usando como si lo fuera.
This misconception has an occupant. The European far right has learned to speak the language of autonomy, security, verification, and data with fluency—a language that sounds technical and civilised, thereby lowering defences. Its most effective form, and the one that causes me the greatest concern, is the seemingly neutral visualisation. A type of content circulates that presents migration as a map of dots: each dot representing one hundred people; the entire map, a stain that expands until it saturates the continent. It possesses the aesthetic of a control panel and the coldness of a statistic, and it is precisely for this reason that it functions: it converts an ideological position into an object that appears to be a fact.
Merece atención el origen de esos gráficos. Uno de los que más circulan procede de una organización que se define por la «remigración», un término que no nombra una política migratoria más. Nombra la propuesta de revertir la presencia de determinados grupos por su origen étnico o cultural, apoyada en la teoría conspirativa del «gran reemplazo»: la idea de que las poblaciones europeas están siendo sustituidas de forma deliberada por élites cómplices. Importa distinguir esto con precisión, porque la confusión es la puerta por la que entra. Una política migratoria restrictiva es legítima en democracia: un Estado puede regular fronteras, fijar requisitos y aplicar expulsiones con garantías. La «remigración» es otra cosa, una ingeniería demográfica basada en la idea de homogeneidad etnocultural. Meterlas en el mismo saco, tratar la segunda como si fuera una variante dura de la primera, es exactamente el error que su estrategia necesita que cometamos.
El mapa hace su trabajo callando lo que importa. Un gráfico que suma «personas acumuladas» produce una sensación de invasión totalizante, pero borra todo lo que convierte la migración en un fenómeno humano: no distingue entre detecciones de cruces y personas —la propia agencia europea de fronteras advierte de que sus cifras cuentan cruces, no individuos, y que una persona puede cruzar varias veces—, ni rutas, ni solicitudes de asilo, ni protección reconocida, ni las causas que empujan a alguien a marcharse de su casa. No informa: fabrica miedo con aspecto de dato. Y esa apariencia de objetividad es justo lo que lo vuelve peligroso, porque desactiva la sospecha que despertaría el mismo mensaje dicho a gritos.
None of this is new in its essence, and that is the point I wish to establish. American platforms were already accused of the inverse mechanism. Human Rights Watch documented in 2023 what it described as systemic censorship of Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook: posts removed, accounts suspended, reach reduced. Meta qualified this and attributed it to errors and the application of its standards. It is not necessary to resolve that dispute to see the pattern: an infrastructure decides, with criteria it does not disclose, which voices are amplified and which are buried. If a European platform reproduces that same power without further oversight, we will not have changed the problem. We will have changed the address of the problem.
And here is what exacerbates the matter on new platforms. The European Digital Services Act requires transparency in moderation and mechanisms for appeals, and it provides a sound foundation. However, its most stringent obligations fall upon very large platforms, those with tens of millions of users. An emerging network may fall below that threshold and moderate with very little public scrutiny. In that twilight, moderation becomes an invisible power: it does not merely remove a post; it teaches the rest what is best left unsaid. It produces silence before it has to produce censorship. And silence leaves no trace, so it cannot even be challenged.
All of this touches culture directly, and it touches me as a part of it. Europe funds art that critically examines technology: there are public programmes and networks that support artists working on artificial intelligence, surveillance, and technical systems. It would be a bitter contradiction if, at the same time, spaces were built where that very critique, when it becomes uncomfortable, is left at the mercy of moderation without safeguards. Art works with the same elements that these platforms administer: image, memory, public emotion, and the legitimacy of what deserves to be seen. Whoever controls what appears and what is buried also controls which works and which discourses exist in public. This is not a technical question about servers. It is a question about who decides what is visible.
No estoy en contra de la soberanía tecnológica europea; la creo imprescindible. Estoy en contra de que se venda como certificado moral. «Europeo» se ha convertido en una etiqueta que promete civilidad, legalidad y respeto, y que por eso invita a confiar sin mirar. Pero una plataforma no merece confianza por su domicilio fiscal, sino por lo que hace: si publica los criterios con los que modera, si deja recurrir una decisión, si se somete a auditoría, si protege a las voces vulnerables en vez de sacrificarlas cuando molestan. Sin eso, el sello europeo es solo un sello, y detrás puede haber exactamente lo mismo de lo que huíamos.
Changing platforms is easy. Changing the regime that decides what is seen and what is silenced is the difficult part, and it is the only thing that truly matters. If the technological independence we pursue does not bring transparency, the right to reply, the protection of uncomfortable voices, and an unequivocal rejection of dehumanisation disguised as data, we will have solved nothing. We will have changed the skin of the problem, and the problem, underneath, will remain intact.
About the open conversation
This text is not against any particular platform, but rather about an underlying risk: that European technological sovereignty, while necessary, might be mistaken for a democratic guarantee that it is not. Changing providers or jurisdictions does not, in itself, eradicate opaque moderation, bias, or dehumanisation disguised as data. I have endeavoured to use concepts with precision, because confusing legitimate criticism of migration with replacement ideology is the gateway through which the worst enters. If anyone wishes to intervene from the perspective of digital law, European technological policy, platform moderation, or networked cultural practice, this notebook remains open.
Sources
European Commission. Technological Sovereignty Agenda (2026); dependency exceeding 80% on non-European providers in key digital infrastructures.
Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 (Digital Services Act): transparency in moderation and complaint mechanisms; reinforced obligations for platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU.
Human Rights Watch. Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook (21 de diciembre de 2023), y respuesta de Meta.
Britannica, 'Replacement theory' (conspiracy theory of the 'great replacement'); Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, 'What Is “Remigration”?'.
Frontex, Migratory Map (methodological note: the data reflect detections of crossings, not unique individuals).
Creative Europe and European Media Art Platform (EMAP): European cultural infrastructures supporting critical creation regarding technology.
Reviewed on 27 September 2026: dates and references corrected.