The Political Tech Space in Europe: Challenges and Opportunities
- Jordan Harp
- Feb 6
- 5 min read
Jordan Harp is a Digital Organizing Strategist and Product Manager with experience as a practitioner and adviser for political campaigns and movements on the left in the US and Europe. He is currently working at ECDA as a Digital Advisor.
I recently joined over 550 people at the inaugural Political Tech Summit in my home city of Berlin, bringing together a mix of professionals across sectors within politics, policy, and technology across the European Union and the world.
As an American, having moved to Europe eight years ago, I was curious how it would compare to my mainstay progressive events – Netroots and Rootscamp. Two conferences which I have fond memories of attending during the Obama years in the US as a fresh graduate breaking into digital work on campaigns.
The Political Tech Summit was presented as the first of its kind in Europe, and its founder Josef Lentsch remarked at the opening that its intention was to foster the growth of a market for political technology in Europe, addressing the existing problems of siloed information and practice.
Many of the speakers worked for platform companies or on policy within governments, so there were really unique opportunities to learn about current topics in adjacent sectors. It was a great reminder of how many intersections exist at all levels of democratic participation and digital technology.
Platforms and Large Language Models
The morning was highlighted by the keynote speech from Google’s Beth Goldberg about the decline in online participation because our digital public squares were designed for financial returns, around algorithms that promote toxicity and scams.
Her team at Jigsaw have conducted experiments with bridging algorithms, where a large language model (LLM) looks at incoming comments on a forum, then assesses them for the traits which research shows leads to a healthy digital public square, such as respect and curiosity.
For an experiment with New York Times article topics, types of comments would rank differently. For instance, within food articles, personal stories were powerful, but within political articles they ranked poorly.
When these algorithms were rolled out on comment sections of 150 publishers, The publishers Developers can use the information to better manage moderation of the comments. They had some fascinating results:
49% increase in people who registered
31% increase in first time commenters
15% decrease in flagged comments
36% reduce in views of negative comments
We at the European Center for Digital Action (ECDA) (and me personally) have recently joined Bluesky to explore new platforms for connecting to people interested in our work. So, the topic of alternative platform moderation approaches which are not designed by Meta or X and their profit-motive for maximal polarizing discourse has been a burning topic for me recently.
Bluesky’s service is designed so that any app developers can build their own moderation and ranking algorithms onto its open protocol (technical deepdive for the nerds). As Bluesky roll out their own Instagram competitor this year, and possibly as teams of product developers create their own client application interfaces to offer Bluesky content experiences in new dedicated ways, I am curious to see if new spaces for organizing the left outside of Meta and X will emerge. We simply must prioritize exploring this possibility as the owners of legacy social media platforms have emerged as partisan opponents of progressive change.
The political tools market in Europe
My favorite panel of the day included different perspectives on the viability of political tech tools to thrive in European campaigns, with Lunda’s Patrick Frank joining Higher Ground Labs’ Gerard Niemira, Brand New Bundestag’s Cora Mantel, and Common Knowledge’s Alex Worrad-Andrews, moderated by the Multitudes Foundation’s Gauri van Gulik.
Patrick Frank from Lunda (a partner of ECDA) perfectly outlined the challenges and opportunities we see at ECDA working with our partner organizations. There are deeply ingrained biases about what an organization’s supporters might be willing to do, and some assumptions that are in ripe need of challenge. A perfect example is around small donor fundraising.
Conventional wisdom of the old guard may think that it will annoy the organization’s supporters to ask for money. However, when reframed as a way for busy people to engage in politics, the results can be outstanding. More so, the organization can build a sustainable source of revenue and deepen the relationship with its membership.
Higher Ground Labs’ Gerard Niemira gave a perspective as an investor in the political tech tools space, outlining that the problem both in the US and Europe can be the market size for tools that have very cyclical buyers. He talked about being open to different models for development, such as closer collaboration between open source projects and political parties. He pointed to Relentless as a unique model in the US, compensating people to do relational organizing within their own communities and Movement Industries in the UK, more on them later.
Alex Worrad-Andrews from Common Knowledge talked about their broad experience working with movement organizations and building tools as a worker owned cooperative product group for hire. One of the challenges he explained was that movements must be prepared for their moments by having their infrastructure in place before opportunities and crises. People need to have their technology in advance and be trained to use it in order to make the most of it.
Cora Mantel from Brand New Bundestag works with candidates from Germany’s democratic parties who are new to campaigning, helping them navigate the complexities of the digital ecosystem. One major challenge with emerging technologies is that political cycles are inherently short, so trialing new tools within this brief period is not very well aligned.
A deep dive into the UK election with Labour digital
I finished the day listening to Johnny Chatterton from Labour and Nat Whalley from Movement Industries talk about all of the tactics and major moments of the UK general election from last year.
Having personally worked on the digital transformation at the Green Party of England and Wales about five years ago, it was impressive to see how things have changed with Labour’s approach to adopting new technologies since my time living in the UK.
They detailed the amount of rapid response email and SMS being sent, the integration with other programs like Zoom webinars, marketing automation flows, and a creative top of funnel approach to social media that fits the evolving culture within the platforms.
It was clear that new developments from Movement Industries had helped the Labour digital team demonstrate the potential for change and get buy-in from their leadership to implement new digital tools.
Having great digital practitioners who are empowered with modern tools to take the party forward can have some very jaw-dropping results in terms of the metrics.
Final thoughts
It was great to get back in the ring of conferences in this space, since the last one I attended was Rootscamp before Covid in 2019! I’m looking forward to seeing how the 2026 version evolves, especially since it means all these people will come visit us here in Berlin again.
Want to talk tech solutions with Jordan and our team of experts at ECDA? Get in touch via info@centerfordigitalaction.eu or subscribe to recieve the latest offerings and advice.
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