Editor’s Note: Recently, Australia implemented national-level restrictions on the use of mainstream social media platforms by minors under the age of 16 and integrated the protective obligations of platforms into a mandatory regulatory framework. At the beginning of 2026, the Spanish government also announced plans to adopt similar measures as part of its systematic crackdown on large technology platforms. These events have once again drawn attention to the power struggle between multinational digital platforms and sovereign states.
One of the authors of this article, Pablo Martínez, participates in the Global South Insights (GSI) project, focusing on digital governance issues. Taking Argentina as an example, the article systematically distinguishes the boundary between individual freedom and public policy, emphasizing the inalienable responsibility of the state in data regulation, institutional design, and rights protection. The Global South Academic Forum is committed to deepening the concept of "digital sovereignty" in both theory and practice; this article is a further exploration of the specific realities of certain countries under this awareness.
"A user posting on a social network to waive certain rights is not the same as a state formulating policies for its citizens. There is a collective responsibility here: the state 'defines the legal framework for the circulation, processing, and transmission of social data as a whole'."
Do You Have a TikTok Account? The Fallacy of Digital Sovereignty and Individual Choice
Pablo Martínez | Germán Pinazo
The individual choice to use TikTok (a short-video social media platform) does not exempt the state from its regulatory obligations regarding the data generated within its borders, including the legal basis for data processing, laws and regulations, and defense mechanisms for citizens against potential abuses. Strictly speaking, the correct analogy is not technical but institutional. A person's decision to travel abroad does not call into question territorial sovereignty, nor does it render borders, controls, or national immigration policies unnecessary. Similarly, the voluntary use of social networks by citizens does not exempt the state from its responsibility to regulate the data ecosystem in which their activities take place. The issue is not the recognition of individual freedom, but the assumption that such freedom can replace public policy.
Throughout history, the concept of sovereignty has never remained static. For centuries, it was almost exclusively associated with territorial control; later, it expanded to cover dimensions such as economy, finance, and natural resources. Today, without replacing any of the aforementioned dimensions, a new dimension has emerged: digital sovereignty. Far from being synonymous with isolation, censorship, or technological self-sufficiency, it refers to something more specific and less ideological: the capacity of the state to effectively determine how information is disseminated, to regulate private actors with unprecedented power, and to protect rights in an environment increasingly dependent on digital platforms.
International experience shows that sovereignty and openness are not contradictory concepts. With its data protection mechanisms, the EU (European Union) has successfully established strict standards without abandoning global trade or technological innovation. Brazil has also made progress by enacting modernized laws and establishing institutions with effective enforcement powers. This region and other countries in the Global South are formulating strategies tailored to their own national conditions, yet all follow a common principle: treating data as a public good.
The problem is that Argentina is in a fragile position, both regulatorily and institutionally, making it difficult to address this discussion. The country still relies on a data protection law enacted in the early 21st century, designed for an era before the emergence of the platform economy, Big Data, and AI (Artificial Intelligence). Reform proposals have failed to make progress, and the state's enforcement capacity has weakened to the point of being almost ineffective. Meanwhile, progress has been made in the process of deregulation and the restructuring of strategic infrastructure related to telecommunications and data flows.
In this context, the chapter on digital commerce in the ARTI (Amendment to the Law on Freedom of Information) is particularly important. Recognizing other jurisdictions as suitable for the large-scale transfer of personal data, limiting the possibility of differential regulation for digital services, and submitting potential disputes to international arbitration mechanisms means placing the state's future autonomy in this sensitive area under restriction. This is not an abstract issue: the financial, health, biometric, and behavioral data of millions of citizens are at stake.
Using user "freedom" as a sufficient argument is also conceptually untenable. In the digital environment, individual choices are constrained by information asymmetry, opaque terms of service, and network effects, factors that greatly reduce the possibility of fully informed consent from users. Furthermore, when data is aggregated at a population scale, it ceases to be a private matter and becomes a strategic resource with economic, social, and political impacts.
Therefore, any country that takes digitalization issues seriously will not leave this matter to individual citizens to decide. Digital sovereignty is not exercised by asking every individual which application they use, but by formulating collective rules to protect rights, promote the development of local capabilities, and maintain the autonomy of national decision-making in a highly concentrated global environment.
Thus, the key question is not whether someone uses TikTok, but whether the Argentine government has formulated a comprehensive public data policy and possesses the institutional capacity to maintain that policy. The critical issue is whether those government officials who choose to represent society as a whole will recklessly and naively surrender control of citizen information and bear all the resulting political and economic consequences.
Private control over data circulating on social media concentrates unprecedented political power: it enables the precision targeting of millions of messages and allows for automatic and large-scale intervention in what people see and hear, ultimately transforming the public sphere into a commercial venue controlled by foreign private companies. Substantial evidence suggests that major platforms deliberately manipulate content to influence user behavior, and personal data is traded on a massive scale in the advertising market without any democratic oversight.
This is why other democratic countries are pushing forward with regulation: the EU requires algorithmic transparency and controls political advertising; Brazil restricts the use of data to train private AI; and Australia has regulated the power of platforms within information systems. In Argentina, refusing to discuss digital sovereignty is equivalent to admitting that foreign private actors can control information, politics, and ultimately, democracy. Confusing sovereignty with individual choice does not expand freedom; instead, it weakens public responsibility. In the digital realm, this weakening is not neutral but is rather (another) specific form of surrendering sovereignty.
About the Authors:
Pablo Martínez: Director of the Information Systems and Technology field at the National University of General Sarmiento (UNGS), Argentina; Coordinator of the Argentina Chapter of the Global South Insights project (UNGS-East China Normal University-Global South Academic Forum).
Germán Pinazo: Vice-Rector of UNGS and Researcher at CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council).
This article was translated from PERFIL.