The ethics of social media platforms and corporate-owned digital tools have become a serious matter of concern, as the owners of these technologies neglect public interest by scaling down moderation and fact-checking, by ending DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programmes, and more generally by running these technologies as their individual property. Also, the sheer fact of their quasi-monopolistic global market position poses an ongoing issue, especially in the context of independence and healthy pluralism.
We, cultural and media players who benefit from EU funds, hereby ask the European Commission and its Creative Europe funding programme to take the threats caused by the growing power of digital capitalism represented by tech giants into consideration, and to take a leading role in tackling them. We think that encouraging the Creative Europe-funded cultural and media projects to prioritise independent, open-source, and European digital tools and to diversify their digital portfolio (for communication, workflow automations, etc.), thus decreasing the influence of tech giants, is
an absolute necessity. To do so and as a first step, we suggest to put in place a new ethical digital alternatives criteria in the Creative Europe upcoming call for applications.
Signatories
AEC European Association of Conservatoires (Creative Europe network) · Better Live (Creative Europe cooperation project) · Circostrada (Creative Europe network) · Culture Action Europe (Creative Europe network) · ECHN European Creative Hubs Network (Creative Europe network) · EDN European Dance Development Network (Creative Europe network) · EJN Europe Jazz Network (Creative Europe network) · EM Guide (Creative Europe cooperation project) · ENCC European Network of Cultural Centres (Creative Europe network) · Europavox (Creative Europe cooperation project) · IETM International network for contemporary performing arts (Creative Europe network) · IN SITU (Creative Europe platform) · Live DMA (Creative Europe network) · Michael Culture Association (Creative Europe network) · REMA European Early Music Network (Creative Europe network) · Reset! network (Creative Europe network) · Slash Transition (Creative Europe cooperation project) · Sphera Network (Independent media network, co funded by the DG Connect) · Sustainable-EEEMERGING (Creative Europe cooperation project) · TMLAB (Creative Europe cooperation project) · Trans Europe Halles (Creative Europe network)
