News & Insights

On 16 February, the Dutch satirical television programme called ‘Zondag met Lubach’ highlighted the dangers of the global platform economy. At INNOPAY, we are very pleased to see a mainstream TV programme helping to create awareness of the risks associated with centralising data on platforms. Encouraging people and businesses to take – and keep – control over their own data (also known as ‘data sovereignty’) is very much in line with INNOPAY’s strategy and vision.

In the latest episode of his hugely popular programme, journalist Arjen Lubach explained how the big platforms operate, including how they are financed and how they make money. He issued a warning to viewers about the consequences of the growing power of giant platforms such as Facebook, Uber, Amazon, Airbnb and Spotify.

How to mitigate the risks and reshape the platform economy

In our view, the solution to reducing the domination of giant platforms lies in giving people control over their own data. This will enable them to move to other platforms without losing data about their friends, history and preferences, for example. This will lead to more platforms that can compete on service instead of size alone.

A very similar situation already exists today in industries like telecom, banking, payments and the internet, which are governed by a uniform set of agreements instead of through large, centralised IT platforms with a solely private governance.

GDPR legislation has given Europeans the right to control their data. This right now needs to be complemented with a harmonised way to exercise it throughout Europe. The newly published European Data Strategy contains many pointers towards this objective, so it is now a matter of defining and organising convergence for data holders and ensuring that all data holders ultimately comply. Changing the foundation of our digital economy through data sovereignty will be a journey of at least a decade.

On the same topic, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has announced ‘Bluesky’, an initiative to create an open-source decentralised standard for social media to restore privacy, control and choice.

Watch the episode of ‘Zondag met Lubach’ here (in Dutch, Youtube supports English subtiles):