At a DIE ZEIT roundtable, three of Germany’s most prominent digital voices debate whether the dream of a “good internet” has already been lost—or whether regulation, innovation, and European sovereignty can still save it.
A heated intellectual confrontation in the editorial rooms of DIE ZEIT has reignited one of Europe’s most urgent technology debates: has the struggle for a fair, democratic internet already been lost to a handful of global tech giants? The discussion, held at the opening of Germany’s major digital conference re:publica, brought together three of the country’s most influential internet thinkers—Katharina Nocun, Markus Beckedahl, and Sascha Lobo—who offered sharply diverging answers to the same unsettling question.
What began as a theoretical conversation about the idea of a “good internet” quickly escalated into a deeper dispute about power, capitalism, regulation, and the future of digital sovereignty. The tone was set early when Beckedahl, a long-time digital rights activist and co-founder of re:publica, argued that society has become dangerously dependent on privately controlled digital infrastructures. He compared social networks to essential public services like roads, suggesting that communication platforms should be treated as part of democratic infrastructure rather than purely commercial products.
Lobo, one of Germany’s most recognizable internet commentators, immediately pushed back, warning against simplistic analogies between physical infrastructure and digital ecosystems. He argued that calls for state-like digital systems risk misunderstanding how innovation works and suggested that Europe needs competitive, globally successful tech companies rather than purely regulatory responses. “We need European Big Tech,” he insisted, warning that without it, Europe could become dependent on either American or Chinese technological systems.
Katharina Nocun, a digital rights advocate and author, took a different approach, focusing on societal needs and structural incentives. She argued that the current internet environment is shaped overwhelmingly by profit-driven platforms that prioritize engagement and advertising over user well-being. To illustrate her point, she drew an analogy with food regulation, suggesting that digital platforms should be subject to similar standards of transparency and safety as consumer goods. In her view, the problem is not just individual platforms, but the systemic lack of democratic control over digital infrastructure.
The debate, originally reported and hosted by DIE ZEIT, quickly turned into a broader reflection on whether Europe missed critical opportunities to shape the internet differently. Beckedahl argued that policymakers failed to foster alternatives to US tech giants, allowing a handful of companies to dominate global communication systems. Lobo countered that overregulation in Europe, including complex legal frameworks such as the General Data Protection Regulation, may have unintentionally hindered smaller competitors while leaving large corporations relatively unscathed.
Nocun rejected this framing, arguing that the real issue lies in market concentration rather than regulatory excess. She pointed to the dominance of companies like Meta, suggesting that the acquisition of competitors such as Instagram and WhatsApp illustrates how innovation is often absorbed rather than allowed to flourish independently. In her view, antitrust enforcement has lagged behind technological consolidation, leaving the market structurally unbalanced.
A central theme emerging from the discussion was the idea of “dystopia,” a term explicitly used by Beckedahl when describing today’s internet landscape. He argued that social media platforms have evolved from tools of democratized communication into attention-driven systems optimized for surveillance advertising. According to him, this transformation has concentrated unprecedented communicative power in the hands of a few executives such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, who can influence global discourse at scale.
Yet even within this shared critique of Big Tech dominance, disagreement persisted over solutions. Beckedahl advocated for stronger public-interest alternatives, including communication platforms modeled on public service media institutions. Lobo, by contrast, questioned whether such alternatives could realistically scale without market-driven incentives, pointing to the limited reach of decentralized platforms like Mastodon. He argued that while alternatives exist, they often fail to achieve mass adoption due to structural limitations in funding, development, and user expectations.
Throughout the discussion, DIE ZEIT repeatedly steered the conversation back to core questions about democracy, regulation, and digital rights. The participants also addressed the role of European policy frameworks such as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, which aim to curb the power of dominant platforms. Beckedahl defended these regulations as necessary tools that finally give Europe leverage over global tech firms, while Lobo warned that excessive enforcement pressure could stifle innovation and push development outside Europe.
Nocun, meanwhile, emphasized the growing normalization of surveillance in everyday digital life. She argued that public resistance to data collection has weakened over time, even as concerns about privacy and authoritarian misuse of data remain highly relevant. According to her, the influence of powerful tech lobby groups has contributed to a political environment in which surveillance policies are increasingly accepted as unavoidable.
The conversation also touched on artificial intelligence, which all three participants agreed would intensify existing power imbalances in the digital economy. Lobo argued that Europe must urgently develop its own competitive AI industry to avoid dependency on foreign systems, while Beckedahl and Nocun stressed the importance of ensuring that such technologies do not further concentrate power in the hands of a few corporations or governments.
Despite their disagreements, a shared diagnosis emerged: the early utopian vision of the internet as a decentralized, democratic space has not materialized in the way many once hoped. Instead, today’s digital ecosystem is shaped by a small number of platforms that control infrastructure, data flows, and attention at global scale.
Beckedahl summarized this transformation most starkly, describing an internet in which engagement-driven algorithms prioritize profit over public value, producing what he called a “dystopian” information environment. Nocun expressed a similar sense of loss, though tempered by the belief that alternative models—such as cooperative platforms or public digital infrastructure—are still possible if political will exists.
Lobo, however, resisted the idea that the situation is irreversible. He argued that while the internet is far from perfect, it still contains immense potential for improvement and innovation. In his view, the challenge is not to recreate an idealized version of the internet that never existed, but to work pragmatically within existing constraints to build better systems over time.
By the end of the discussion, no consensus had been reached—only a clearer picture of the fault lines shaping Europe’s digital future. The debate published by DIE ZEIT ultimately revealed not just disagreement over policy, but fundamentally different visions of what the internet is, what it should be, and who should control it.
As Europe grapples with rising geopolitical tensions, rapid advances in artificial intelligence, and the entrenched dominance of US tech giants, the question posed at the beginning of the conversation remains unresolved. Whether the “good internet” has already been lost—or merely transformed into something still salvageable—depends, it seems, on whom one chooses to believe.
