Speaker: Fabian Stiehle

Abstract: The promise of an internet-based ‘sharing economy’ is broken by the reality of a ‘platform economy’. The dominant business models of the internet are proprietary platforms, criticised for undermining fundamental societal values. In this talk, we will raise the question whether we can build platforms differently and incorporate human values—like fairness—by design. I will report on a recent study, where we investigated the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), a regulatory ambition to tackle platform power. We investigated the DMA from a system design perspective, looking for design strategies to achieve values like fairness or user choice. On our way to build a better internet, we will briefly revisit the idea of decentralised information systems, which gained renewed interest, but in practice often reproduced (the same) centralised markets. We will also have to be wary of falling into the trap of 'digital sovereignty', which offers the vision of reproducing the status-quo, but under new ownership. If we manage to jump through these hoops, we can contribute to an exciting interlocution of two fields that increasingly become more connected: that of computer science and computer ethics.

Shortbio: Fabian Stiehle is a research associate and doctoral student at the Technical University of Munich. He is interested in a critical examination of the negative effects of the platform economy and how better technical design could influence a value-driven approach to platform design. As such, he is especially interested in the technical and organizational aspects of decentralized information systems – a branch of technology promising a new approach to build internet platforms.

Currently, he investigates process automation systems, and the different ways to architecture, develop, and integrate such systems with blockchain-based technology. 

Fabian holds a Master of Computer Science from Technical University of Berlin and a Bachelor of Applied Computer Science from Konstanz University of Applied Sciences.