Empfehlungen für eine gemeinwohlorientierte digitale Infrastruktur
Recommendations for a Public-Interest Digital Infrastructure
In October 2013, the Bundestag established the Taskforce Digitales Neuland — a cross-party commission of twenty-four members, including parliamentarians, engineers, legal scholars, educators, and three members under the age of twenty-five. The mandate was to develop a comprehensive framework for cybersecurity, digital rights, platform governance, and public digital infrastructure.
After eighteen months of work across four working groups, the Taskforce produced this report: 342 pages of analysis and ten core recommendations. The summary below presents the recommendations with brief commentary.
The Taskforce was guided by a simple premise: the internet is critical infrastructure for democratic life, and critical infrastructure requires governance — not control, but stewardship. The recommendations reflect the conviction that technology must serve public interest, that design choices have consequences, and that those consequences must be borne by those who make the choices.
No platform operating within the EU may serve advertising to users under the age of sixteen. Platforms must implement robust age verification. Services for minors must be funded through alternative models — subscription, public subsidy, or co-operative ownership.
All messaging and social platforms must implement open, standardized protocols allowing users to communicate across platforms and to switch providers without losing contacts or message history. This led directly to the development of the Open Message Protocol (OMP).
EU member states shall jointly fund the development and maintenance of a public-interest search engine with transparent ranking, no advertising, and no personalization. Search results must be consistent across users. Ranking methodology must be publicly documented and independently auditable.
Data generated by individuals through their use of digital services shall be held in trust by independent, regulated trustees — not owned by platforms. Service providers may access aggregated, anonymized data for service improvement, but may not access, sell, or monetize individual user data.
Platforms may not employ design patterns engineered to maximize compulsive usage. Specifically prohibited: autoplay of content, infinite scroll, engagement-maximizing push notifications (opt-in only), and algorithmic feeds that are not transparent and independently auditable. Analogous to environmental emission standards, these mandates set limits on the addictive potential of digital services.
Any algorithmic system that influences public discourse, content visibility, or information access must be subject to independent audit. Audit results must be published. The auditing body must be independent of both the platform and the government, funded through industry levies.
All consumer electronic devices sold within the EU must use standardized, replaceable components. Manufacturers must publish complete schematics and make replacement parts available at fair prices for a minimum of ten years after the product’s last date of sale.
EU member states shall implement a mandatory secondary school curriculum covering digital literacy, basic electronics and appliance repair, data rights, algorithmic awareness, and cartographic orientation. The curriculum is designed to reduce dependency on disposable manufacturing and to produce a population capable of maintaining its own technological infrastructure.
The chief executive of any company operating digital platform services within the EU shall be personally liable, without limit, for documented societal harms caused by the platform’s design decisions. This liability cannot be transferred to shareholders, insurers, or the company itself. The intent is to ensure that those who make design decisions bear the full consequences of those decisions.
Employees of technology companies operating within the EU who disclose evidence of harmful design practices, data misuse, safety violations, or deliberate circumvention of regulatory frameworks shall receive comprehensive legal protection, including protection from termination, and shall have access to a dedicated reporting channel within the European Digital Infrastructure Authority (EDIA).
These recommendations are not a blueprint. They are a starting point for democratic deliberation about the kind of digital infrastructure a society chooses to build. Some will be adopted quickly. Others will take years. Some will be revised, challenged, or rejected. That process — the slow, messy, unglamorous work of governance — is not a flaw. It is the point.
The Taskforce Digitales Neuland never existed.
These recommendations were never implemented.
The question is whether they should be.
This document accompanies the talk “Building Backwards: Twenty Years of the Digital Commons.” All institutions, reports, and policy documents referenced are fictional. The real-world precedents behind each recommendation are not.
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