Taming the social media monster

Western democracies must win back control of the boundaries of public debate from social media giants, Marietje Schaake suggests in an exclusive interview with Kathimerini.

Schaake, a former member of the European Parliament, is now international policy director at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. She spoke to Kathimerini about outgoing US President Donald Trump, the digital footprint of the European Union, and how public policy can tame the monster that social media has turned into.

Trump's social media ban, Schaake tells the newspaper, "made many people realize the actual power of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms." The companies' decision raises "many questions," she says. "Why, for example, did they ban the American president but not other...