Last month, the European Union imposed hefty fines on major tech companies: €500 million on Apple and €200 million on Meta, for alleged anti-competitive practices under the new Digital Markets Act. Similarly, platforms like X and TikTok are under investigation for potential violations of the Digital Services Act. These developments highlight a growing global trend: governments are ramping up their efforts to regulate the online information space, often invoking the need to combat fake news or harmful content. Yet, while initiatives like the EU’s Digital Services Act or the EU AI Act may be driven by good intentions, they frequently result in overly aggressive regulation that fails to deliver meaningful results: disinformation continues to thrive, ideological echo chambers remain entrenched, and innovation, particularly in the AI sector, is crushed in the process.
The solution is not more top-down regulation, but more choice. Just as individuals have (or should have) the right to choose their healthcare providers, so too should they have the freedom to select how information is curated, ranked, and delivered to them online, through third-party recommendation providers.
One compelling proposition for enhancing user autonomy and fostering a more competitive digital ecosystem would be for regulators to mandate that platforms permit third-party recommendation providers. Under such a framework, a TikTok user, for example, would have the freedom to choose between TikTok’s proprietary recommendation algorithm and an alternative third-party recommendation engine that better aligns with their values or preferences. This would effectively introduce an intermediary layer between the content distributor and the end-user, an idea originally proposed by computer scientist, physicist and founder of Wolfram Research, Stephen Wolfram, who referred to these alternatives as “final ranking providers” in his 2019 testimony before the U.S. Senate.
For users, the implications are profound: no longer would they be bound to the opaque algorithms of dominant content providers such as X, TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, or Instagram. Instead, users would gain the prerogative to select a recommendation provider they trust: one that may offer greater transparency, prioritize data privacy, or cater to niche interests.
Crucially, this new system could catalyze the emergence of an entirely new market of specialized recommendation providers. These entities could distinguish themselves by offering algorithms that, for instance, mitigate algorithmic bias, ensure political neutrality, or curate content specifically tailored to users’ unique ideological or cultural leanings. For instance, one recommendation engine might prioritize delivering politically balanced suggestions, while another might cater exclusively to particular ideological audiences.
For tech companies, the ramifications would be twofold. On the one hand, this would incentivize innovation and improvement in recommendation technologies, as recommendation providers would compete to offer the best and most trusted services to their users. On the other hand, this would allow tech content providers to improve their user experience, as their recommendation system would no longer be limited to their own platform but rather shared across a variety of different platforms, from X to Amazon and from Instagram to Netflix, thus allowing for increased cross-platform personalization.
From the user’s perspective, this new structure would be an unprecedented expansion of choice and control. Should users become disillusioned or distrustful of their chosen recommendation engine, they could easily switch to a competitor, and under laws like the GDPR, request that their data be erased.
Of course, empowering users through third-party recommendation engines also raises practical questions, particularly around how these systems would interact with existing platform infrastructure and business models. One of the biggest hurdles to allowing third-party recommendation providers is the issue of who gets to use the content, and at what cost. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube own or control much of the content they display, and they rely on their in-house algorithms to keep users engaged and advertisers happy. Letting outside companies recommend the same content could threaten their business model, unless there’s a way for those third parties to pay for access. Without clear rules or incentives, tech companies have little reason to open their doors to competitors and to let them compete with them on their own platform, and with their own content.
A possible fix would be to set up a system where third-party recommenders pay platforms to use their content, just like how music streaming services operate today. For example, platforms like Last.fm pay licensing fees to music labels to legally stream and recommend songs to listeners. A similar approach could work for social media or video content, where outside recommendation engines pay a fair fee in exchange for access to posts, videos, and engagement data.
That said, making all of this work in practice won’t be simple. Platforms would need to create new ways to plug in outside recommendation engines and manage users’ data securely, something they aren’t set up to do today. The incentives for tech companies to open up their platforms are still probably too small, but third-party recommendation engines could make their platforms more appealing by offering better and more personalized content ranking, and relieve tech platforms of the growing political and regulatory pressure over how they curate content.
Ultimately, if regulators are serious about preserving individual freedom online and fighting misinformation, they should focus on mandating openness instead of dictating outcomes. Rather than pitting punitive regulation against tech platforms, enabling third-party recommendation engines can align user freedom with innovation thus unlocking new business models while easing the pressure on tech giants to be the sole arbiters of truth online.
This piece solely expresses the opinion of the author and not necessarily the magazine as a whole. SpeakFreely is committed to facilitating a broad dialogue for liberty, representing a variety of opinions. Support freedom and independent journalism by donating today.
