Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Experts recommend holistic strategy for online platforms

Experts advise a strategy for dealing with communication platforms
Experts advise a strategy for dealing with communication platforms Keystone-SDA

Online platforms such as social networks or search engines influence the formation of public opinion and thus democracy. The Federal Media Commission recommends a holistic strategy for the control of platforms.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Platforms not only have great market power, but also power over the opinions of their readers, the commission wrote. This is because these companies use algorithms to curate a significant part of the public debate, mainly for commercial purposes.

+ Three-quarters of Swiss use ‘divisive’ social media daily

In a position paper presented in Bern on Tuesday, the commission recommends a holistic strategy for the future control and regulation system of platforms. This must go further than the law on communication platforms planned by the government.

The keywords are regulation of market power, non-commercial alternatives to algorithms, increased social supervision of platforms, accountability and a considered approach to digitised content.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR