Platform Regulation and Digital Sovereignty

the European Union and China facing the hegemony of the U.S. Model

Abstract

This article analyses the political responses of the European Union (EU) and China to the hegemony of the United States of America (USA) over the infrastructures that support social communication systems, consolidated through digitization, the privatization of the internet, and the concentration of the global platform market, problematizing the relationship with digital sovereignty as a condition for adopting autonomous development policies, both culturally and technologically. From the discussion of the two cases, it seeks to draw useful lessons for the construction of sovereign policies in Brazil. Methodologically, this is a comparative analysis based on an extensive review of the theoretical literature and case studies relating to the case studies, as part of the research project “The Economic Governance of Digital Networks: Towards an Analysis of Internet Markets and Competition and their Impacts on Users’ Rights”. The conclusions indicate that the USA model has shaped the global architecture of the internet, establishing a regulatory framework that other countries have had to adapt or challenge. While the EU seeks to mitigate market concentration by stimulating digitalization and regulations with an emphasis on individual rights, without structurally altering its technological dependence, China has opted for a model of digital sovereignty, strengthening its infrastructures and national companies based on state definitions. The study highlights that the growing global concern with the platformization of the internet could bring new challenges to the USA paradigm. It argues that countries like Brazil should critically analyze these two models and consider their own strategies and regional coordination, to ensure great-er technological autonomy in the 21st century.