The digital space has become a key arena both for social and economic inclusion in the EU and its Member States. In 2023, the EU has consolidated its position as a global entity in technology regulation and focused on mitigating discrimination, especially of vulnerable and marginalized populations. However, the transition to a digital society brings several challenges. My comment on the Fundamental Rights Report highlights framed as major threats.

The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) regularly compiles its annual report assessing the human rights situation in the EU. The 2023 Report highlights the risks and opportunities of an increasingly digital society, stressing the importance of protecting vulnerable groups from the harmful effects of rapid technological development. The following problems (major threats) highlight the need for comprehensive legislation and vigilant monitoring to ensure the protection of fundamental rights in the digital environment:

1. Online hate speech, disinformation, and digital exclusion.
2. AI and Human rights
3. Election integrity, in terms of the increasing number of cyberattacks, etc

The Report also points out that the rapid pace of technological change requires constant monitoring and proactive measures to protect those at risk of being left behind.

Democracy and human rights

The Report declares that democracy and human rights are deeply interlinked. They refer to a judgment in 1998 when the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) declared that democracy is the only political model envisaged by the European Convention on Human Rights and the only one compatible with it. This principle is deeply rooted in the EU, as reflected in the Treaties, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and EU policies. One of the most important features of a healthy democracy is its ability to create a legal and political environment in which human rights can be realized for all individuals. I completely agree. The values listed in Article 2 TEU are important and are built on each other, so the weakening of one is a threat to all the others. In the 21st century, these are crucial as the only possible way to maintain and create an adequate framework to defend democracy and fundamental rights within is to adhere to these. In this article, for obvious reasons, I cannot deal with the whole Report, although there is a topic, which is comprehensively related to the others, namely how the digital revolution affected human rights.

On account of that, the Report also engaged in the overview of the threats digitalization gave birth to, for example, the problem of election integrity and disinformation, which are deeply interlinked. The impacts of disinformation, cyberattacks, and the resulting weakening of the integrity of elections define the core debates of 21^st-century democracy.

A new era of human rights?

Parts of the Report deal with an important and rapidly changing area, namely the digital society, and its human rights aspects. The “digital revolution” completely changed our everyday lives and connections to other human beings. This affected our thinking about specific human rights as well and even encouraged legislative reforms worldwide. Freedom of expression, human dignity, racism, and hate speech are well-known and inevitable topics in the area of constitutional law as well as in the public, political sphere. The role of the different social media platforms has an unimaginable power, which opened serious debates about their potential or actual limitations. It is not only about their economic background but rather about the fact that they “outgrew the state” in social, economic, legal, and political terms as well.

A part of these problems were first addressed in the EU with the application of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), but some questions remained unanswered. This could—for instance—be connected to the issue of democracy (examined in the Report) in the form of the following question: Are political actors responsible for the comments under their social media posts? There is a judgment of the ECtHR, Sanchez v France, which deals with the problem, subject to certain critiques (also on our blog), but the introduction of such regulation is on the table in Hungary as well, according to news reports. In Sanchez, the ECtHR decided—for the first time—that the users of different social media can be held criminally liable for statements left by third parties on their profile pages, without this constituting a violation of Art. 10 ECHR.

Another example of how digital societies or platform capitalism are connected with democracy is the method they can change our point of view through the usage of different algorithms, creating filter bubbles, or even limiting freedom of expression. Freedom of expression has always been recognized as the precondition of formulating a democratic public opinion, so this constitutes another point of connection to the democratic principle. While the adjudication of these disputes benefits from the necessity and proportionality test, this kind of defense mechanism or balancing test is more problematic if placed solely in the hands of social media platforms.

Digital societies and human rights

The Report also explains other violations which are deeply related to the problems created by the transition into a “digital society”, potentially causing several disadvantages to certain groups in ways that may not be obvious. Vulnerable and/or marginalized communities may face barriers to accessing digital technologies, services, and opportunities, leading to increased social and economic exclusion. In my opinion, these barriers can be identified in two areas. The absence of proper knowledge on how to use the internet and the different devices is a problem specific to the older or less socio-economically well-off populations; however, comprehensive education on the appropriate use of the internet still leaves much to be desired. Due to this, the Report also explores how digital transformation can unintentionally perpetuate inequalities and emphasizes the need for policies to ensure that all individuals benefit from digital developments.

We cannot avoid mentioning the exploding rate of hate speech and the phenomenon of bullying, which—due to the high penetration of the internet into every household—does not cease to cause pain and depression to the victims once they leave certain physical premises or the physical proximity of their bullies. According to a previous report of the FRA, women were targeted the most with online hatred, “including being exposed to hatred of a sexualized nature.” However, we also see that people of African descent, and Jewish and Roma populations are among the most vulnerable groups. This previous report also made recommendations on how to reduce the amount of hate speech and thus the exposure of vulnerable groups to hatred. One of these recommendations, also highlighted by the Report referred to “the early stages of implementing the DSA [when] the very large online platforms that the act covers should pay specific attention to misogyny (or sexist hate) and to protected characteristics among the systemic risks considered in the context of the risk assessment and mitigation measures that the DSA requires.”

The Report highlights that in terms of human rights, according to the Eurobarometer 50 % of respondents believe that the EU protects their rights well in a digital environment, although there are significant fluctuations between countries, ranging from 32 % in Greece to 69 % in Ireland. In terms of “new human rights” (the third generation), namely digital rights, 6 out of 10 (60 %) think that such rights are applied well in relation to freedom of expression and access to information online. Indeed, there are already prosperous EU legislative innovations—the DMA, the DSA, and the AI Act—, but these are just the beginning of the journey. The absolute transformation of politics, the nature of disinformation, the boundaries of freedom of expression, the role of Artificial Intelligence, and the almost unlimited power of social media platforms constitute omnipresent dangers, that should be regulated in due time. The EU’s efforts in this realm of regulation have not without reason gained the name “Brussels effect” in overseas literature, regarding the many different types of regulation that have been introduced, mentioned above.

Conclusion

Even though the Commission adopted a “Defence of Democracy” package, often criticized for its potential political purposes, the new challenges that technology transfer and technological development provided us will not only affect the principle of democracy in Europe, but create serious issues from the aspect of human rights such as human dignity (Article 1), respect for private life and protection of personal data (Articles 7 and 8), non-discrimination (Article 21), equality between women and men (Article 23), freedom of expression (Article 11), and freedom of assembly (Article 12). The FRA Report analyzes many of these problems, and I urge those interested in getting to know these in more detail to read the Report thoroughly. The issues highlighted here and in the Report present the need for comprehensive legislation and monitoring regarding all of the above, together with proactive action to ensure that the benefits of digital technologies are available to all, without exacerbating existing inequalities and undermining our democratic values.

Soma BÁCSFALVI is a Msc student of law at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of the University of Szeged, Hungary, and a scholarship student of the Aurum Foundation. As a former intern with the presidential cabinet of the Hungarian Constitutional Court, his research focuses on the interconnections of national constitutional law and European public law, in particular on the rule of law and its manifestations in the European Union.