Vernetzte Autonomie

Digital fundamental rights require a different theory of fundamental rights. Informational self-determination, in particular, isolates the rights-holder even though digital interactions take place in networks. Fundamental-rights protection falters in the face of the horizontal and intertemporal linking of data sets by powerful platforms. Creating "community-relatedness" only after the fact is not sufficient. Nor does the objective dimension of informational self-determination escape being tied to notions of individual subjectivity. Alternative theories of fundamental rights that incorporate institutional elements point the way toward an infrastructural dimension of informational self-determination. Through connectivity norms, subjective rights have a gradually transformative effect. Rights of access acquire a participatory component. The "right to be forgotten" finds its institutional form in a right to de-networking. The model for this theory of fundamental rights protection is the relationality of digital commons. Instead of opposing the fundamental rights subject to the community, individuals act in many digital communities at once and shape them through participation. Algorithms and data are already being created and maintained trans-subjectively. In this context, the state bears infrastructural responsibility: it should support social processes of negotiation without co-opting them. Here, a decentralized facet of the debates on "digital sovereignty" becomes visible. Networked autonomy describes a fundamental-rights subjectivity that could still make freedom possible in digital contexts.