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WELCOME BACK. THIS IS THE FREE MONTHLY EDITION of Digital Politics. I'm Mark Scott, and will be speaking at an online event about social media data access and attacks on independent research, organized by Columbia World Projects, the Centre for Digital Governance at the Hertie School and Tech Policy Press. It's at 16:00 CET / 10:00 ET on June 18. You can register here.
This week's edition marks Digital Politics' 100th newsletter. That's just under 260,000 words over 22 months on everything from Europe's stuttering digital rulebook to the United States' quixotic take on tech to the rise of the Middle Powers movement.
Not everything I've written stood the test of time. So I went back over the last two years to figure out what I got wrong, and why. Call it a mea culpa. Digital policymaking moves fast and the geopolitics have only grown more complex since 2024.
Thank you for reading along the way. I started this newsletter to understand what was going on around me. I find these dispatches a useful way of framing my thinking. I hope you also find it useful.
To mark Digital Politics' 100th edition, I'm offering a centenary rate of $80 a year — locked in permanently — for anyone who subscribes between now and June 10. That's the only time this rate will be available.
If you've been reading for free and have been considering whether to support the newsletter, you can subscribe here.
Let's get started:
Move over digital cold war. Say hello to G2 frenemies
DONALD TRUMP HAD YET TO WIN THE White House when I started writing Digital Politics. But shortly after his victory in November, 2024, I laid out what I thought would be a digital policymaking slam dunk. Just like his first term, the newly-elected president would take an aggressively hawkish view on China. That would include the extension of tech-related export controls and other trade barriers to stop the world's second largest economy from dominating the era of artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and quantum computing.
All other countries — most notably the so-called Middle Powers like Brazil, South Korea and the United Kingdom — would have to figure out how to balance the United States' expected harsh treatment of its geopolitical foe with their own needs to engage directly with China.
Fast forward to the middle of 2026, and the picture is more nuanced than I had expected.
The aggressive stance of the Trump 1.0 administration has softened into a more transactional approach to Beijing. Under direct pleas from Nvidia, Washington allowed the American chip giant to ship some of its most advanced semiconductors to China — although that has stalled due to American bureaucracy and a growing aversion in the Middle Kingdom toward relying on US-made chips. The US and China also mulled greater cooperation on AI governance during Trump's visit to Beijing last month, though details of what that would actually look like remain unclear.
"Relations between the United States and China are better than they’ve been in many years," Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defense, told an audience in Singapore on May 30.
Well, possibly. A day after Hegseth's comments, a unit within the US Commerce Department issued guidance that closed a potential loophole that could have allowed high-end tech, including Nvidia's semiconductors, from being sold to subsidiaries of Chinese firms located outside the country. It's hard not to see that as hawkish parts of the US government holding the line — just like in the Trump 1.0 administration — against any rapprochement between Washington and Beijing.
Confused? Yeah, me too. What I thought would be a binary 'digital Cold War' between the world's two largest economies has morphed into something more complex. It's a whipsawing relationship that mixes genteel diplomacy, economic realpolitik and more mutually-reinforcing ties on tech than could have been expected 18 months ago.
That has knock-on consequences for Middle Powers. If we were living in a binary world in which the US took an overtly hostile position to China (and ongoing friendly relations with long-standing allies), then there could be a consensus between democratic countries about the need to push back against Beijing.
We do not live in that world. So far this year, more than 20 national leaders or countries' heads of state have visited China as states from Canada to Serbia figure out the new G2 dynamic. Sure, many of these same domestic politicians have also visited the US. But just as relations between Beijing and Washington have become messy, so too have diplomatic ties between other countries and the world's remaining superpowers.
My initial digital Cold War framing was wrong not because Washington and Beijing are now besties. It was wrong because I had assumed a level of joined-up thinking from American policymakers toward China that didn't pan out. Call it a managed incoherence — something that is significantly harder for Middle Powers to navigate.
Thanks for reading the free monthly version of Digital Politics. Paid subscribers receive at least one newsletter a week. If that sounds like your jam, please sign up for the Centenary offer here.
Here's what paid subscribers read in May:
— The protection for children online runs counter to long-standing fundamental privacy rights; the use of AI to profile voters, not to create deepfakes, is the greatest challenge to the US mid-terms; Half of Americans polled are worried about AI. More here.
— I crunched the numbers on how much sovereign AI would actually cost; Why digital antitrust efforts have not hobbled online advertising dominance; Spending on government AI systems will hit $80 billion in 2026. More here.
— The UK's political implosion is an apt metaphor for its flagging digital policymaking; Middle Power countries are finding their feet in the new "G2 era;" AI giants are massively subsidizing their consumer-focused products. More here.
— Everything you need to know about the European Tech Sovereignty proposals; The pros and cons of Europe's social media accountability efforts; Internet shut-downs have risen four-fold in a decade. More here.
Countries just can't stop with social media bans
I DO NOT LIKE SOCIAL MEDIA BANS. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of banning outright. There's almost no evidence that such moratoriums lead to the results that politicians and policymakers are looking for. The proposals are often caught up in parents' legitimate concerns about protecting their child from online harm. The fact that we are even contemplating these moves is a black mark against global platforms which have repeatedly refused to open themselves up to independent scrutiny.
Where I went wrong (again and again) was assuming that national officials and lawmakers would either review the existing literature on banning social media for minors, or wait for the ongoing trial in Australia to show results (or not) before making their own judgements about cutting off teenagers from the likes of TikTok and Instagram.
More fool on me.
By the end of the year, expect a number of countries, including the UK and those within the European Union, to either have implemented nationwide bans or outlined proposals about how such initiatives will be phased in over the next 18 months. In an era of FOMO, kids' social media bans have become the digital policy that no country's leader wants to miss out on.
Some of this is down to pure politics. No politician is ever going to lose an election by telling would-be voters that her aim is to protect children. It also highlights how the political mood music has turned against social media giants — even when these platforms are still readily used by the same lawmakers to reach the electorate ahead of domestic votes.
Some of this is down to policymakers having few meaningful levers to quell the growing amount of online harm that bombards us all online. Countries' ongoing attempts at policing social media are more philosophical than practical (despite the growing list of enforcement actions.) Some platforms — at least those from the US — have embraced a 'free speech' ethos that has made their interactions with regulators increasingly adversarial.
Either way, I underestimated the political stickiness of a digital policy that is not grounded in quantifiable evidence. The honest truth is that when parents are scared and platforms no longer have credibility, such evidence no longer matters — and the social media bans start appearing.
The era of AI regulation is not over
I HAVE A BIAS TOWARD WESTERN DIGITAL POLICYMAKING. I spend much of my time trying to understand the inner workings of what's happening in Brussels, London, Washington, etc. In those capitals, the shift away from hard-nosed rules toward artificial intelligence is pronounced. We are in an era of AI-driven economic growth and competitiveness. Within that landscape, AI rulemaking has taken a back seat.
But what I missed over the last two years was a growing stable of AI legislation from countries outside of this Western-centric world view. That was a significant own goal at a time when everyone and their grandmother wanted to know what was happening with AI.
This AI policymaking has taken on various shades depending on where you look.
Brazil offers the most like-for-like comparison to what the EU has just rolled back on via its Digital Omnibus package. In Latin America's most populous country, the proposals include a risk-based approach akin to what Brussels has envisioned. That includes corporate risk assessments and a combination of regulators to oversee different AI use cases. Still, it has yet to be enacted.
Japan has gone a different route. Tokyo preferred a more innovation-friendly approach that involved public funds for AI research, co-regulation with companies and voluntary guidelines over mandatory restrictions. There are no potential fines for wrongdoing. Instead, regulators can issue guidance, request information from companies and shame firms that do not comply.
Singapore, again, has charted its own path. The small Asian country views its domestic AI rules through the prism of export and trade. It announced a world-first governance framework for agentic AI and is now working on interoperability standards which would position the country as the go-to standards setter.
Many may argue these proposals are less rule-making and more voluntary guidelines. Fair point. But the geographical scope of AI governance — and in this analysis, I didn't include what's going on in India and parts of Africa — is a trend that I underestimated. Just because Western countries are pressing pause on the AI legislation button does not mean other parts of the world are willing to wait around.
For sure, AI rulemaking is not thriving globally. But a purely Western frame is no longer sufficient to understand where AI governance is actually heading.
Chart of the week
MY BRAIN WORKS IN IMAGES, NOT WORDS. So I used Anthropic's Claude to produce a chart of the most commonly-used phrases over the first 100 editions of Digital Politics to figure out what were the main themes over the last 22 months.
Not surprisingly, topics like social media and artificial intelligence get a lot of play. So too did politically-sensitive themes and people like the Digital Services Act and Donald Trump.
Source: Digital Politics
What did actually happen in Romania?
I WOULD NEVER PRETEND TO BE AN EXPERT on Romanian politics. But when far-right politician Călin Georgescu won the first round of the country's presidential election in late 2024 — and Romania's constitutional court annulled his victory after irregular social media activity on TikTok — I took a stab at what was going on.
My main point: national policymakers and the European Commission were getting over their skis by accusing social media of swaying the election in favor of Georgescu, and that accusations Russia played a direct role in that online activity had yet to be proved.
I was wrong, to a degree.
The role that TikTok played in the presidential election's first round has yet to be proved. Despite a lot of fanfare from Brussels that it had started an investigation into TikTok's potential role, no public assessment — roughly 18 months after the fact — has yet to be published. EU officials rushed headlong into a national political mess, and incorrectly used the bloc's Digital Services Act as a tool to "fix" whatever had just happened in the European country.
But where I misjudged was the level of both social media activity and Russian involvement in what turned out to be a litmus test for Romania's commitment to its EU membership. FWIW, pro-Western politician Nicusor Dan eventually won the Romanian presidency in May, 2025.
Yet last year, TikTok admitteda network of 27,200 accounts, which operated through a fake engagement middle-man, attempted to promote a far-right political party and independent candidate Georgescu by posting comments on the platform at a mass scale. It's hard not to see that anything other than a wholesale attempt to use social media to sway the election — albeit how successful this covert network was is still debatable.
The links to Russia are also more likely than I had initially thought. Romania's national security agencies declassified documents that revealed a sophisticated TikTok operation that involved reams of accounts — which had been dormant for years — suddenly posting like crazy weeks before the 2024 first round election. These tactics, according to the country's spooks, were prime evidence of a coordinated effort by a foreign adversarial country (though they did not name Russia.)
Elections are always messy. So, too, is analysis trying to figure out what happened, in almost real time. What I missed was the level of sophistication of the covert operation to support Georgescu's campaign via TikTok — and its likely ties to the Kremlin.
The Brits don't know what they are doing on digital policy
THIS ONE SITS CLOSE TO HOME. As someone who has watched consecutive British governments try to articulate a vision toward technology over the last decade, the subsequent inertia — on everything from online harms to artificial intelligence to data protection reform — has been hard to swallow. I may not always agree with what Brussels and Washington do on digital policy. But at least I can see a somewhat coherent argument about how they go about their business.
Not so for London.
In early 2025, I laid out what could be the UK's post-Brexit dividend toward tech. It included a doubling down on the country's existing digital rulebook as a means of making it the global centerpoint for so-called "RegTech" (that position has now been taken by Singapore.) It included a revamping of the UK's financial services sector and public funding options to support the country's leading tech industry. It included a plea for London not to blow hot-and-cold on digital rule-making amid a generational shift in geopolitics.
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Looking back, none of these proposals landed. That's not surprising. The UK's ruling Labour Party finds itself amid a likely leadership challenge. The country's tech sector remains Europe's largest — although most of its firms eventually go public in the US or are bought by American rivals. Any form of Brexit dividend, in terms of using the country's digital rules as a differentiator in the global tech race, has been in short supply.
These recommendations still hold true. What I misjudged was the political inertia that has made the UK an also-ran in the global digital policymaking discussion. It's hard to articulate what London stands for on tech — other than wanting to both entice foreign firms to set up shop locally and create populist digital rules like a potential social media ban for kids.
This is not a party political criticism. The same woes confronted previously Conservative Party administrations. The UK is still stuck in the middle ground and lacks a vision for digital policymaking. I offered suggestions on how to fix that. Politicians had other ideas.
What I'm reading
— The Knight Georgetown Institute assessed how individual governments were implementing age assurance and how each proposal stacked up against the others. More here.
— The G7 countries agreed to voluntary commitments on how to protect children online. More here.
— The European Commission published draft guidelines for so-called "trusted flaggers," or independent groups that can raise issues with online content to regulators. More here.
— Softbank announced it would invest up to $87 billion in data center infrastructure in France. More here.
— The Pope laid out his concerns about artificial intelligence. More here.
digitalpolitics.co/what-i-got-…
Mastodon
in reply to Mastodon • • •reshared this
Sovranità Digitale 🇪🇺✨🛰🌐🔋, Hannah Grace, Eye, Majden 🍉🎗🎨🥋👠☮️, Stefano Marinelli, Matteo Brunati, Leander Lindahl, Oblomov, Leave X - Protect Democracy e Jure Repinc reshared this.
European Commission
in reply to Mastodon • • •We are happy to be here, and to engage with this wonderful community! 💜 🐘 🇪🇺
reshared this
Hannah Grace, ☑️ Cath, quinta - Stefano Quintarelli, informapirata ⁂, wakest likes your bugs ⁂ e Oblomov reshared this.
jpl99
in reply to European Commission • • •Then please work harder to protect our intellectual property rights.
Because right now I can't put any open source work online without it being scraped into the AI machine. Open source becomes a meaningless word without copyright protection.
Susan Calvin
in reply to jpl99 • • •The_Universality
in reply to jpl99 • • •@jpl99
For real, tho.
Today I've blocked all Amazon servers repetitively scraping my gitea instance.
20 minutes since I've set up that rule ant it blocked over 105 requests.
informapirata ⁂
in reply to European Commission • • •Also remember that the US has stopped funding the Open Technology Fund, and Europe could start funding all related projects like Signal, TOR, and F-Droid, used daily by over 2 billion people worldwide. We need not only technological sovereignty, but also encryption, anonymity, and independent app stores.
agendadigitale.eu/sicurezza/pr…
@Mastodon
Open Technology Fund: il futuro della privacy digitale in pericolo
Francesco Macchia (Agenda Digitale)Nicola Buson reshared this.
Chuckles
in reply to informapirata ⁂ • • •Lucy
in reply to informapirata ⁂ • • •informapirata ⁂
in reply to Lucy • • •@30p87 I remind you that the software you are using to write this message was ALSO funded by the European Commission
@EUCommission @Mastodon
Maya
in reply to informapirata ⁂ • • •@informapirata @30p87 It'd still be great if the EU weren't prioritizing appealing to AI companies, e.g. by weakening GDPR and IP protections to make it easier for those to hoover up everyone's private data for AI training.
politico.eu/article/brussels-k…
edps.europa.eu/press-publicati…
kuketz-blog.de/eu-digital-omni…
Brussels knifes privacy to feed the AI boom
Ellen O'Regan (POLITICO)informapirata ⁂
in reply to Maya • • •Responding to my post, however, won't improve the situation in Europe.
Maya
in reply to informapirata ⁂ • • •@informapirata Your reply to Lucy has the tone of minimizing EU's AI obsession, hence I chimed in. Sorry if that wasn't the intention.
By the way it's neither respectful nor productive to infantilize people, like you're doing to me now.
informapirata ⁂
in reply to Maya • • •Maya
in reply to Maya • • •@informapirata @30p87 The GDPR is already too weak or a regulation set, with an abysmal enforcement track record; e.g.:
netzpolitik.org/2025/databroke…
Yet they want to weaken it even further, for AI companies.
Targeting the EU
Ingo Dachwitz (netzpolitik.org)Pedro J. Hdez
in reply to European Commission • • •¡Bravo! But I just hope it doesn't take another 25 years.
commission.europa.eu/about/dep…
Open Source Strategy: History
European CommissionThe_Universality
in reply to European Commission • • •state
in reply to European Commission • • •Regards to EU Commission:
had this as a reply, its not about going through steps to do this, this HAS to happen.
Get the social media and messaging apps to clean up their mess? Preventing kids from doing something won't stop them doing it, fix the source of the problem instead of prohibition.
Another thing Social media knows which user are childern and 16 years old.
I will say this again:
GET childern to 16 years old OFF social media and messeger apps. <-- this is the big deal.
witchescauldron
in reply to European Commission • • •The EU tech sovereignty plan – #OMN (Open Media Network)
hamish campbell (#OMN (Open Media Network))Thomas Lee ✅
in reply to European Commission • • •Stian
in reply to Mastodon • • •Jure Repinc reshared this.
ARGVMI~1.PIF
in reply to Mastodon • • •Does that mean the Commission plans to exempt open source social media from the upcoming age verification requirements?
The idea of promoting open source social media is laudable and I'm grateful to hear the Commission say it, but it seems antithetical to that goal if one must use a closed-source operating system to access it.
@EbbeSand
in reply to Mastodon • • •Rin3d
in reply to Mastodon • • •The fundamental problem have with mastodon, and all the current "open protocol" solutions. Is that they are vulnerable to the snowball effect and manipulation.
I as a user do not control my data/account, my instance does. As instances grow they'll become more and more likely to take more and more control and eventually even command how the protocol develops. Which is exactly what happened to Email.
Mastodon needs to become decentralized, not just federated.
CohenTheBlue
in reply to Mastodon • • •David Esteve 🍉 reshared this.
tinnsak1
in reply to Mastodon • • •M/KΞ 🇪🇺
in reply to Mastodon • • •gungajin
in reply to M/KΞ 🇪🇺 • • •M/KΞ 🇪🇺
in reply to gungajin • • •@gungajin belgium for an example that block grapheneos because they deem it insecure
How did they verify ? Not a google validated os
So if you refuse Google surveillance machine you are not secure and they enforce this BS monopoly
Dmian 🇪🇺
in reply to Mastodon • • •Step by step, we’ll get closer to the goal.
wobweger
in reply to Mastodon • • •#OpenSource liberates us
🖖
sleepy62🍁🛠️ 🖥️ 🔬 🌞
in reply to Mastodon • • •Wow thats great👏
Canada needs to take note and follow this lead.
#canada #cdnpoli
Kerplunk
in reply to Mastodon • • •i miss a clear statement that Software developed with public money MUST remain public.
Also a condemnation of Leeching.
A lot of open source software is used by
governments and commercial entitys who never contribute anything to its development or the supporting community's.
Erik van Zijst
in reply to Kerplunk • • •Ethics aside, contributing back has never been a condition for using OSS. Nor should it be if we want it accessible to all.
Kerplunk
in reply to Erik van Zijst • • •@prutser
Ethics aside, contributing back has never been a condition for using OSS. Nor should it be if we want it accessible to all.
That post is self contradictory, there can only be accessibility for all if enough contribution is made.
Erik van Zijst
in reply to Kerplunk • • •@Kerplunk
Nonsense. A one-person OSS project on GH is just as accessible to all as the Linux kernel.
But if you will: where in any of the OSI licenses does it mandate active contributions from users?
gungajin
in reply to Mastodon • • •With a mad emperor in the USA, finally even the most americanophile politicians must have realised that it might not be a great thing to be so absolutely dependent on US tech.
Gabe Pérez
in reply to Mastodon • • •Cavallo Pazzo
in reply to Mastodon • • •InfernoWarrior
in reply to Mastodon • • •Joshua Kevins
in reply to Mastodon • • •Hello greetings from Joshua Kevins the coordinator for the Nutritious Foods Uganda.
democratici
in reply to Mastodon • • •However, with the Digital Omnibus (VII), the EU wants to loosen the rules on AI, and the only way to prevent it is to participate in the survey - in the link - provided by the old rules...
digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/…
Let's make our voice heard! There is only a little time...
@jpl99 @engideer
Targeted consultation on the draft guidelines for the classification of high-risk artificial intelligence systems
Shaping Europe’s digital futurePeter Bindels
in reply to Mastodon • • •informapirata ⁂
Unknown parent • • •@hannes99
> heavily
NGI Fund is Mastodon's largest institutional investor
> EU now wants to fund commercial AI substantially more
AI is the trend of recent years, and if the EU wants to be relevant, it cannot limit itself to legislation (AI Act) but must also provide adequate sponsorship in terms of funding, possibly for open-source technology (even if commercial).