Come salvaguardare i valori pubblici in un mondo interconnesso? Le sfide per l’Europa. Translated by Eleonora Benecchi

Abstract

Over the past three years, we have witnessed how online digital platforms have deeply penetrated every sector in society, disrupting markets, labor relations and institutions. Five American tech companies (Google-Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) are now dominating the western world, not just transforming social and civic practices, but affecting the very core of western democratic processes. The digitization of society involves intense struggles between competing ideological systems and contesting societal actors – market, government and civil society – raising an important question: Who is or should be responsible and accountable for anchoring public values in an online world? This article describes and analyzes the European challenge to govern “platform societies” which are increasingly dependent on global commercial infrastructures – ecosystems that are privatized and whose mechanisms are hidden from public view.

Keywords

• digital platforms
• sharing economy
• big 5 tech companies
• datafication
• algorithmic governance
• geopolitical power
• public values