Workshop Program

Keynotes, panel discussions, mini-workshops, and networking breaks brought together diverse stakeholders from academia, civil society, industry, and government. Together, we explored the latest research on harmful online content and brainstormed actionable strategies to address these pressing challenges.

We focused on two central questions:

1. What do we know about the challenges of hate speech and mis- and disinformation online, and how can we best approach them?
2. What do we know about effective solutions, strategies, and tools to combat these issues?

Some key takeaways of the two-day workshop:

Consistency Matters: Clear and consistent definitions of harmful content, like hate speech, are essential for guiding action. However, finding the best approach to achieve this remains an open challenge.
Focused Interventions: It’s important to differentiate between “harmful but lawful” content and “illegal” content to enable targeted and effective interventions.
Effective Countermeasures: Counterspeech and content moderation are powerful tools but must be implemented thoughtfully. It’s crucial to base intervention strategies on solid evidence to ensure they lead to meaningful impact.
Access to Data: Limited access to platform data remains a barrier, hindering our ability to comprehensively study harmful content, such as misinformation, and its real-world effects.
Technological Trade-offs: While algorithmic changes and other tech-driven solutions can help reduce misinformation, they often come with trade-offs, like reduced access to political news or decreased diversity in discourse.
Adapting Moderation: Looking forward, we need to consider moderation tools that can keep pace with the growing volume and speed of online content production.

The workshop was co-organized in collaboration with the Bavarian Regulatory Authority for New Media (BLM), the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice (StMJ), the Institute for Strategic Dialogue Germany (ISD), das NETTZ, the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), and the Content Moderation Lab at the TUM Think Tank.

Project Description

Challenge: Societal Resilience and Strategic Autonomy

Geopolitical tensions are at an all-time high, as highlighted by the Berlin 2024 Security Conference, which warned of escalating threats to NATO on Europe's eastern flank. Ensuring peace through deterrence is not limited to conventional military capabilities; it requires robust defenses against hybrid warfare, including attacks on critical infrastructure, social media, and political stability. Building resilience at all levels of society, especially in the digital realm, is essential, including cloud computing, the “operating system” of modern societies.

While European public sector organizations and their partners have made progress in securing sovereign cloud infrastructures - "Sovereignty of the Cloud" - simply having European-based, legally compliant offerings is no longer enough. Enterprises must operationalize sovereignty in the cloud and maintain true autonomy and security when using complex, multi-cloud environments. This requires translating theoretical constructs into practical frameworks, tools, and policies that enable public administrations to not only choose sovereign infrastructures, but to act sovereignly within them - managing applications, data, devices, and users in ways that enhance resilience, deter potential aggressors, and uphold democratic values.

Making Digital Sovereignty in the Cloud Actionable

As a Fellow of Practice at the TUM Think Tank, Philipp sees a unique opportunity to bring together multidisciplinary expertise to shape a research agenda that makes digital sovereignty in the cloud actionable. By doing so, we can help build societal resilience and strategic autonomy in the face of emerging cyber threats and strengthen Europe's digital backbone as a deterrent and peacekeeper.

Project Goals

Approach

1. From Abstract to Operational: Develop and refine a conceptual framework that moves beyond theory toward implementable “Sovereignty in the Cloud” practices, outlining clear, actionable principles for public institutions.
2. Policy-Tech Integration: Align legal, regulatory, and strategic considerations with technical and organizational capabilities, producing guidance that enables European administrations to maintain security, compliance, and autonomy in multi-cloud environments.
3. Practical Tools and Capacity Building: Deliver a playbook, teaching cases, and workshop formats that empower decision-makers and practitioners to navigate complexity effectively, enhancing deterrence and resilience through concrete measures.

Deliverables

1. Theory-to-Practice Paper: Draft a concise white paper defining sovereignty-in-the-cloud in tangible terms. Anchor the concepts in existing EU regulations, Governmental policy and cloud providers capacity to provide a coherent framework linking policy to technical responsibilities.
2. Proof-of-Concept (PoC): Partner with a sovereign cloud provider and a public-sector body to test the framework.
3. Knowledge Transfer and Community Building: Utilize the Digital Sovereignty Talks platform and host curated roundtables at the TUM Think Tank. Gather input from policymakers, cloud providers, cybersecurity experts, and academic researchers to refine and stress-test the framework.
4. Educational Integration and Tools: Develop a teaching case—building on the style of my “OpenAI Board Drama” case, to illustrate real-world sovereignty-in-the-cloud dilemmas. Produce a playbook offering step-by-step guidance, enabling organizations to implement robust multi-cloud strategies that enhance resilience and serve as a digital deterrent.
5. Sovereignty-in-the-Cloud Playbook: A comprehensive, action-oriented guide that helps European administrations operationalize digital sovereignty within multi-cloud environments.

About Philipp Müller

Philipp is dedicated to advancing the resilient digital transformation of governments, multilateral institutions, and global society. He is Vice President for the Public Sector at DriveLock SE, a Fellow at the TUM Think Tank, and a BKC Circle member at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center. With senior leadership roles at Amazon Web Services, Gartner, and DXC, Philipp brings extensive experience at the intersection of technology and policy. He has taught and conducted research at Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, and the Harvard Kennedy School. An accomplished author, he has published books and articles on digital transformation. Philipp holds a PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

The Fellowship of Practice is carried out in a personal capacity.

A two-day workshop bringing together experts in the field

Content moderation and free speech in the digital realm - and how to balance them - are key topics for researchers, philosophers, public officials, NGOs, and, of course, social media platforms and users. At the TUM Think Tank, we had the pleasure of hosting a number of international experts in this field. The group came together for two full days focused on analyzing this pressing issue, exchanging ideas, and presenting empirical research from the perspectives of governance, industry, and political behavior.

From ideological biases in content moderation and the politics of platform regulation to citizens’ preferences on how online harmful speech can be curved and regulated, and the efficacy of labeling content as AI-generated, the workshop covered a wide range of topics, stressing the need for a transnational conversation about content moderation.

Panel discussion

In a thought-provoking panel together with Benjamin Brake (Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport), Friedrich Enders (TikTok Germany), Andreas Frank (Bavarian Ministry of Justice), and Ruth Appel (Stanford University), we discussed the complexities of defining harmful speech and taking action against it, how platforms are audited and how they balance transparency with user privacy and free expression when it comes to content moderation decisions.

The conversation centered on the division of responsibility for content moderation and the transparency of enforcement from the key stakeholders involved. It was noted that while the German government is responsible for smaller platforms not covered under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Commission is responsible for larger ones like X or TikTok.

• While the precise ways in which tech companies should deal with harmful speech based on the definitions and guidelines provided by the DSA are clouded by some vagueness, a common theme in the discussion was the necessity for transparency in content moderation decisions and the need to always take context into consideration. Based on the conversation, vagueness in defining harmful speech can be seen as a flexible way of dealing with it by tech companies and governments. Researchers, on the other hand, pointed out that it can also be problematic, especially when it comes to its precise detection through automated methods.
• In addition, Friedrich Enders shed light on TikTok's content moderation process. The platform uses a combination of AI and human review to quickly remove harmful content. Conscious of the fact that some harmful, e.g. graphic content, may still be in the public interest, such content may remain on the platform for documentary, educational, and counter-speech purposes, but would be ineligible for recommendation to users on TikTok’s For You feed.
• The panel also highlighted the challenge of balancing freedom of expression, user privacy, and user safety, with TikTok stressing their commitment to both principles, with the government strongly advising that the importance of upholding freedom of expression is such that one should always opt for freedom of speech when one is doubtful about how borderlines cases need to be moderated.

The Chair of Digital Governance co-jointly organized the workshop at the Munich School of Politics and Public Policy, the University of Oxford, the Technical University of Munich, and the Reboot Social Media Lab at the TUM Think Tank.