Germany has moved towards legislating what social media algorithms must put in front of users, with a draft treaty that would require at least 20 per cent of recommendations to come from media classed by regulators as promoting diversity.
The quota appears in the discussion draft of the second part of the Digital Media Interstate Treaty, published on September 28 by the broadcasting commission of the Länder, the body in which Germany’s 16 regional governments coordinate media policy. Comments can be submitted until November 13.
Wherever a platform runs a recommender system, at least every fifth item displayed would have to come from a pool of outlets certified as making a special editorial effort in favour of diversity. Which item from that pool appears would still depend on the algorithm and on the user’s own interests.
The drafters justify the figure by comparing it with the share of advertising already carried in feeds, that is, the proportion of what users see that is not selected organically. The text presents the quota as protection against what it calls algorithmic displacement.
Entry to the pool builds on the “public value” status created by the 2020 media treaty. Public broadcasters ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio would qualify largely automatically, though private outlets would have to apply to Germany’s 14 regional media authorities, which decide who receives it.
Several commercial broadcasters, among them RTL, n-tv, Welt and ProSieben, already hold the status.
The draft regulates which outlets are favoured rather than whether their output reflects competing viewpoints. Nothing in it requires an individual promoted item to offer a perspective the reader would not otherwise encounter, and the text does not explain why one recommendation in five is the point at which diversity improves.
The services union ver.di has backed the plan while arguing that its enforcement provisions are too weak.
The proposal would also land on ground the European Union has already claimed, as the Digital Services Act governs how the largest platforms build and disclose their recommender systems. French lawmakers dropped a proposed blacklist of platforms this year after the European Commission warned that their plan to bar under-15s from social media clashed with the bloc’s own digital rulebook.
Whether the quota survives is another matter. An interstate treaty requires the agreement of all 16 states and ratification by every regional parliament, and the first part of the reform, settled by the state premiers in June, is not due to apply until 2027.
