“Whoever controls search algorithms controls access to the world's knowledge, to our history and how it is remembered”

Digital expert, journalist, and former member of the German Bundestag Anke Domscheit-Berg grew up in the GDR. She is one of the first signatories to support the #FreeWebSearch charter. Here she explains why freedom of information and the charter’s demands are so important.

“I grew up in the GDR, where access to knowledge, facts, and truth was censored and served to manipulate the population. Back then, at least you could still expand your access to knowledge via Western television. Today, a handful of US billionaires who are less and less committed to democratic values dominate the social infrastructure of the digital society, from search engines to social networks. They are making themselves tools of enemies of democracy with fascist goals and are increasingly using the technologies and platforms they control for the mass manipulation of users. The search for information plays a prominent role in this manipulation—it is the gateway to knowledge, and knowledge is power, more than ever in a thoroughly digitized society.

Whoever controls search algorithms controls access to the world’s knowledge, to our history and how it is remembered, to current events and how they are perceived and documented, to research results and which of them are incorporated into further research, to statements by politicians and their respective context and thus their visibility, electability, and relevance. Whoever controls search algorithms controls the perception of reality and can manipulate it in such a way that the perceived and actual realities drift further and further apart, manipulating people into positions they would not otherwise take.

The combination of the “search” hub with the dissemination of content via equally manipulated social network algorithms and the use of AI for the non-transparent creation of summaries jeopardizes our democracy, whose existence depends largely on free access to diverse information. For example, freedom of the press has long needed more than just the ability to publish without censorship, because freedom of the press in a digital society is only real if press content can also be found. After all, what cannot be found via an internet search does not exist in digital reality and therefore cannot have any effect. Freedom of the press therefore also requires freedom of search.

The social infrastructure of the internet must finally be understood as a public service and therefore organized for the common good, or at least regulated in the interests of the common good, instead of being controlled by individuals. The 10 demands of the Free Web Search Charter are a suitable guideline for this.

Anke Domscheit-Berg
Senior Digital Expert + Advisor, former Member of the German Bundestag