The European Union should have its own regulator-friendly equivalents to X, TikTok and Instagram, according to the candidate for chancellor of Germany’s Greens.
All of the major online platforms were currently either controlled by “authoritarian” China or an American right-wing billionaire, said former vice-chancellor and climate action minister Robert Habeck.
Habeck spoke during a surprise appearance on a Twitch livestream hosted by professional gamer HandOfBlood.
“So on the one end, we have autocratic, light-right or perhaps not light-right at all technology billionaires and on the other hand Chinese authoritarian non-democratic government,” he told the streamer.
Robert #Habeck war bei einem der bekanntesten Gaming-Youtuber @HandOfBlood Deutschlands im Stream. Feier ich gerade extrem! #HandofBlood pic.twitter.com/B43aqyQjFq
— Peter Colymore 🇺🇦🇩🇪🇪🇺🌍 (@IsarJesus) January 14, 2025
On both the Chinese and US sides, “some kind of worship of the authoritarian exists,” he said.
However, both sides had managed to spearhead major technological leaps forward while Europe had been left behind.
“Where is the European X or Twitter? Where is the European TikTok? The European Instagram? Where are the European inventions?” Habeck asked.
One way of counterweighting the influence of American and Chinese platforms was to introduce a pan-European online platform populated with content produced by state-owned public broadcasters, such as Germany’s ZDF, he said.
“You can build a communications platform underneath [this content],” he argued.
“Then you have a huge content space and a European answer [to American and Chinese social media] with its own rules.”
Robert Habeck, the German economy minister and Greens candidate for chancellor, has proposed a dramatic increase in the country’s defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. https://t.co/tMPr37YoGb
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 7, 2025
Ahead of the country’s upcoming federal elections in February, Habeck has taken a digitally-focused approach to campaigning.
On his own YouTube channel, he posts videos styled as dinner-table conversations with voters.
He and his team had also proposed his appearance on HandOfBlood’s Twitch stream. The professional gamer clarified to his audience the Greens had contacted him to arrange the appearance.
Viewers reacted largely positively to the surprise interview, with the live streamer’s progressive-leaning audience welcoming Habeck’s English-language greeting of “hi chat”.
It was unclear, though, how much political value Habeck would derive from the appearance as a whole.
Currently, his Green party polled in fourth place, just behind Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), though the gap between them is small.
The Greens trailed their right-wing rivals by much more, with the populist-right Alternative for Germany currently five points ahead of Habeck’s faction.
Germany’s Christian Democrats enjoyed nearly twice the Green’s 15 per cent support, with polls regularly putting the European People’s Party-aligned group at over 30 per cent.
Its support, though, has shrunk in recent weeks, as the AfD benefitted from attention from international right-wing figures such as Elon Musk.
The AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel appeared in an English-language stream with the X-owner last week.
Video footage of that podcast has now been viewed over 1.5 million times on X, compared to only several thousand for the recording of Habeck’s Twitch stream uploaded to one of HandOfBlood’s YouTube channels.
Only the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is capable of protecting the country’s Jews, its leader Alice Weidel has told Elon Musk. https://t.co/sgXDKp4XkD
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 9, 2025
