Humanising the Digital Public Sphere

Recent developments in US politics have sharpened the distinctions between American and European approaches to transparency, privacy, sovereignty and civic values. The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy frames European democracies as targets for political manipulation in favour of political actors on the populist right, while neglecting risks of discourse manipulation by hostile state actors like Russia and China. Reflecting this attitude, US platform providers who sponsor the administration are lobbying for policies that protect technology platforms from auditors and expose platform users. By contrast, the broader EU approach to regulation (e.g. through the Digital Services Act) seeks to protect the privacy of users and limit exposure to harmful content, while requesting transparency from digital platforms. These differences are fundamental and quite possibly irreconcilable. Accusations of censorship are the cornerstone of criticism; even threats from platform providers who wield significant political influence in Washington, D.C. The Digital Services Act imposes new transparency requirements on digital platforms, but it does not ‘censor’ expression and largely leaves political manipulation in the clear, legally. To achieve systemic changes that shift the balance of power towards digital publics and civic values, we interrogate the incentives that shape conditions of possibility in the platform environment, the metrics that are monetised, and the mathematical paradigm used to represent digital publics. In place of current mathematical modelling approaches, the metrics they afford, and the incentives that cascade through the platform environment from the infrastructure level to user interactions, we propose a paradigm shift that draws on time-tested practices in design for mass publics. A shift from microscopic (Lagrangian) modelling that conceptualises publics as stereotyped identities or profiles to macroscopic (Eulerian) modelling that conceptualises publics as dynamic fluids in context would allow completely new metrics akin to those used in civic and events design: flow rate, wave patterns, relative volatility/viscosity, friction and turbulence vs. smooth flows, and so forth. Such metrics can be monetised as well as footfall metrics according to a Lagrangian paradigm and would generate radically different systemic incentives. Hostile rhetoric towards NATO allies like Canada and Denmark/Greenland, reckless trade policies, and increasingly ambiguous commitment to Article 5, US attitudes signal seismic shifts in the Transatlantic relationship. In response, calls for strategic independence increasingly incorporate both defence capacity and critical infrastructures, in particular media platforms. We argue that European alternatives should use monetisation models based on metrics that yield incentives that minimise exposure of individuals and their communities, and preserve civic values.