Opinion: Big Tech seems all-powerful, but what do we actually want?

This opinion piece appeared in the Gelderlander on Saturday, October 10 . Read the original here.

The Dutch are skeptical about social media and AI. How can we regain control over our news? That’s the question Nienke Venema and Kees Kraaijeveld are asking themselves.

The Dutch are no longer easily swayed by social media. This was revealed last week in a study by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center. Of all the nationalities surveyed, we are the most skeptical. As many as 93 percent of the Dutch believe that social media manipulates its users.

It might sound strange, but we’re glad to see this critical attitude. It shows that we in the Netherlands are well aware of what’s happening on our timelines. At the same time, we’re using social media more than ever. We’re skeptical of it, yet we still use it. That’s strange. If social media isn’t trustworthy, how do we expect to stay informed?

That is what *The Great Media Debate* is about.

A world of information is just one click away. That’s a treasure. But this abundance also causes uncertainty. Is what you read true? Is the sender who they claim to be? Is the image we’re presented with real or fabricated? We’re receiving more and more information, but we’re becoming less and less able to make sense of it. We call this “the information paradox.”

People perceive the abundance of information as an “information jungle,” according to exploratory research conducted by Ipsos I&O on behalf of the Democracy and Media Foundation and De Argumentenfabriek. The proliferation of platforms, sources, posts, and opinions makes it difficult to navigate. “If there’s something I really need to know, I go to my brother. It gives me more confidence in the choices I make,” says one participant.

On the interactive platform of the news site NU.nl, where we’ve been engaging with readers over the past seven weeks, someone wrote: “I’m pretty far to the left on the political spectrum. So I read left-leaning articles more closely. The algorithm knows this, so I end up reading even more of them. That inevitably leads to tunnel vision.” You used to decide for yourself who to follow on social media. Now you’re fed content by the addictive algorithms of Big Tech. Traditional news media are struggling more and more, because platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are gobbling up our attention—and nearly all advertising revenue.

AI is accelerating this trend. Texts, photos, and videos are created in a matter of seconds. Chatbots summarize the news for us, without us knowing on what basis. The Dutch find this unsettling—and rightly so. That’s why now is the time: we still have the chance to decide together what our news will look like in the future.

This is of great importance. A democracy cannot function without conversations among citizens who have access to reliable information that allows them to freely form their own opinions. Without these conversations, we cannot live together. What information do we need for that? And which news media play a role in this?

The media cannot answer these questions on their own. “I don’t know exactly how our readers perceive us,” said the editor-in-chief of this newspaper in the podcast episode of “A Journalist Goes to the Doctor”, which will be released this weekend. “We have a lot of numbers, a lot of data. But figuring out the emotion behind it all is time-consuming.” That’s why we want to hear from you. How do you experience the news? What are you missing? What concerns you, and what could be improved? Starting this fall, we’re organizing meetups across the country as part of “The Great Media Debate.” We’ll also be stopping in Nijmegen. Big Tech may seem all-powerful, but what do we want for ourselves? Alongside all the threats, there are countless opportunities. We need to talk about this together—for our own sake and for the sake of our democracy.