Big tech monopolies undermine democracy.

In the present context, the phrase “democratic deficit” will be used to describe democracy-related harm, that is, harm to democratic processes that arises in a certain context.55 Democratic deficits in digital markets can be attributed to several factors, such as the dynamics of digital markets, the intermediary function of platforms, and the digital platforms’ power over data—a feature of digital markets that has also been keeping the antitrust world on its toes.56 While this cannot easily be separated, different types of democratic deficits appear to emerge online. On one hand, there is the spreading of misinformation that concerns an election or a particular political debate. Parties that can have an interest in such behavior include foreign powers that want to interfere with democratic processes,57 or political campaigns that want to spread wrong information about opponents or situations to influence voters and public sentiment.58

On the other hand, there is the use of political micro-targeting by political campaigns themselves to sway voters in their favor, in particular by using the methods of targeted advertising that digital platforms make available.59 In the digital sphere, this type of practice is rendered possible by the large troves of user data that communication, social media, and other digital platforms have at their disposal and that they use to “influence voters through the direct transmission of stimuli, which are formed based on the preferences and characteristics of an individual.”60 Through the application of “sophisticated psychological and technological methods,” individual users are then targeted with personalized political content.61 Both of these scenarios make use of the dynamics of online communication platforms that favor outrageous, “clickbait” content that evokes an emotional response from users, rather than constructively contributing to political debates by setting out a variety of (often more moderate) views.62 And both of these scenarios lead to the realization that the data capabilities in the hands of Big Tech platforms63 are important sources for the democratic deficits arising online. For these and further reasons, the European Parliament is debating, at the time of writing, whether one needs to put a halt to targeted ads as are currently offered by several Big Tech companies,64 while the European Commission has just published draft legislation to provide transparency on how users are targeted with political ads.65