Social Media is critical infrastructure

The joint statements coming out of the Summit on Digital Sovereignty miss a structural blind spot: we keep talking about AI while ignoring the system that actually shapes public opinion at scale - social media.

Social media is critical infrastructure. It governs what people see, what narratives take hold, and how fast disinformation spreads. As long as Europe remains dependent on a handful of US platforms, we have no meaningful control over the integrity of our own information ecosystem. This is not abstract. Coordinated bot networks, influence operations, and targeted manipulation are already capable of swinging public sentiment - and elections.

Yet, AI receives the spotlight and the funding. Meanwhile, our digital public sphere - the actual battlefield of democratic resilience - is left undefended.

Eurosky has been addressing this issue for a while: “Social media is critical infrastructure, and a vital piece of the European tech sovereignty agenda. We need to regain structural control over our information ecosystems.”

Today, Europe is 100% defenseless against hostile campaigns that weaponize the very platforms we don’t control. We treat these systems like harmless entertainment feeds, instead of the geopolitical vulnerabilities they are.

If we are serious about sovereignty, then sovereign European social media - built on open protocols, operated under European law, and architected for democratic governance - must be funded like infrastructure, not consumer apps. In fact, given the scale of hybrid threats, it should be funded from defense budgets, not innovation leftovers.

Everything else is tactical distraction. The strategic layer of democracy is the information layer. And right now, it is outsourced.