But what they both underline is that the gap in Europe’s digital rulebook — not just the missing definition of influencer, of people who shape what millions of Europeans believe — but identifying structural issues that might need a radically different approach when talking about building European alternatives.

In other words, not a new ‘W’ (that is essentially the same thing as the platform X, formerly Twitter, minus the toxic owner and algorithms), but a totally different approach.

Tornberg puts the way to a solution in structural terms. Platforms that mix community-building and identity-formation with political discourse turn toxic by design.

Different social functions need different spaces, designed for different purposes — not a single commercial platform optimising everything for engagement.

Neves arrives at the same conclusion through the specific case of influencers. Someone you trust about a skin product becomes someone you trust about a vaccine, an election, how to raise your children. The purposes get mixed — not because the influencer set out to mislead anyone, but because that’s how the relationship works, and the platform incentivises.

I find a bit annoying that Reddit/Lemmy was not considered in this opinion piece. Upvotes directed at content rather than at users and subscriptions built around communities and topics rather than around users could IMO solve the discussed problems.