State or platform? The new power struggle over data

The five-point digital regulation package recently announced by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez may appear on the surface to consist of technical topics such as social media bans and platform oversight. However, this text points to a much deeper moment of rupture. In my view, this announcement is a clear declaration of an attempt by states to re-establish dominance over citizen data, the public sphere, and social trends against major technology companies. Moreover, he made this announcement on the Twitter/X platform (see https://h7.cl/1jfIp). 

In fact, we have been talking about a space effectively managed by platforms for a long time. Public debates, political polarization, agenda-setting processes, and even the construction of children's identities are now shaped through algorithms. Despite this, the companies that design and operate these algorithms have been able to avoid legal and political responsibility by persistently defining themselves as "neutral intermediaries." Sánchez's first point intervenes precisely at this juncture: holding platform executives legally responsible for violations that occur on their sites.

This is a critical threshold for communication studies. Because algorithmic ranking, recommendation, and visibility decisions are now clearly editorial activities. A system that decides which content to highlight also determines the architecture of the public sphere. The state is saying here, albeit late: "If you are acting as an editor, you must also take responsibility."

The second point takes this approach even further by criminalizing algorithmic manipulation. Not only the hosting of illegal content but its algorithmic dissemination is now defined as a criminal matter. This completely shatters the dogma that technology is apolitical. Algorithms are not just lines of code; they are the main engine of the attention economy, cycles of anger, and polarization. The fact that platforms use these mechanisms for commercial concerns has led them to ignore social costs.

The third point envisions the establishment of a system to monitor hate and polarization. This is, in my opinion, the most "social scientific" leg of the package. It is clear that something that is not measured cannot be managed. However, there is a fine line here. If this monitoring mechanism works solely with the state's security reflex, it can easily turn into a surveillance tool. But if it is designed in conjunction with academia, civil society, and independent experts, it could be an important compensatory tool that makes the social cost of platform capitalism visible.

The fourth point is the most controversial: a social media ban for those under 16 and real age verification systems. At this point, the state is effectively assuming the role of digital parenting. However, we cannot help but ask this question: Is "doing nothing" in the face of platforms that systematically shape children's attention, emotions, and self-perception really more libertarian? The reason platforms have kept age verification performative until now was that child users represent both data and the potential for loyal future consumers.

The final point is the most powerful symbolically. The state is no longer talking about abstract principles, but directly about company names. The announcement that investigations will be launched into Grok, TikTok, and Instagram shows that the era of "timid regulation" has ended. Elon Musk's reaction to this announcement, "Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and traitor," reveals another truth: Big tech companies no longer position themselves only as economic actors, but also as political ones.

However, there is a critical risk here. Yes, the commercial concerns and power ambitions of technology companies must be balanced. But at the same time, the state itself must also be audited. If there are actors at the head of the state who have abandoned institutional reason and manage the country as if it were their personal domain of power, this struggle could turn into something entirely different. The alliances and conflicts occasionally seen between Musk and Trump clearly show us how this imbalance can become personalized. In such cases, neither the state nor the platform wins, but the citizen is the one who loses again.

Therefore, in my opinion, what is truly needed is the involvement of a third party, that is, compensation and balance mechanisms. Without independent regulatory bodies, data access for academia, the oversight role of civil society, and algorithmic transparency, this power struggle cannot be managed in a healthy way. Otherwise, platform feudalism at one extreme and digital authoritarianism at the other are inevitably awaiting us. 

For this reason, Sánchez's announcement should be read not as a manifesto of censorship, but as a clear crisis document regarding who will hold sovereignty in the post-digital age. But the real question still remains: Will the citizen take part as a subject in this new power struggle, or will they be reduced to a data source squeezed between two powers? The answer to this question will determine the democracy debates of the coming years.