Written by Avani Singireddy and edited by Humyra Karim
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
This quote, claimed so hopelessly by Lord Acton, a 19th century historian, is more applicable now than ever given the increasingly unchecked emergence of numerous tech giants including but not exclusive to Apple, Facebook, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, and Microsoft.
Let’s engage in a thought experiment for a second. How many days do you think you can go without using any services of the previously listed companies? It's probably unimaginable to even begin to think of, especially considering how almost all forms of human communication now seem to be digitized. It’s practically like living pre-Internet. This speaks to the unrestrained control these companies hold over our lives on a daily basis. Whether it's researching for a school essay or getting stuck on a Youtube loophole, we’ve all been subjected to influence from these companies, whether it's for the better or worse.
The allure of technology seems now stronger than ever with its increasingly easy accessibility and so called “free” use. However, an important distinction to make is that nothing is entirely free; there are only fixed tradeoffs. In the case of these tech corporations, we are trading our personal data for free services. Most, if not all, large tech companies operate under the guise that they provide the public nonessential services at no cost whatsoever, supposedly working to satisfy people’s needs. But, in actuality, the majority of these self-proclaimed champions of society use the private information we entrust them with, in many cases unknowingly, for their own corporate gains. Corporations manipulate the public in three major ways: invading our privacy, misusing their market share, and spreading misinformation.
Invasion of privacy occurs in many ways in the digital world, with the most famous case being the Cambridge Analytica breach. On March 17, 2018, in an exposé published by the Guardian, the Cambridge Analytica Scandal broke out. For background, Cambridge Analytica was a political data analysis firm that worked on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. They posted a personality quiz on Facebook called “This is Your Digital Life” and would then pay people to take this quiz, claiming it was for their research. The problem is that the quiz not only collected your answers but also mined through all your personal information, including your likes, posts, and even private messages. Worse, they also went through any and all of your Facebook friends’ data. It’s expected that a total of 87 million people’s data was illicitly mined.
Using this illegally obtained data, Cambridge Analytica targeted swing voters with political ads, allowing for political candidates such as President Donald Trump to get unprecedented insight on voters, potentially causing them to vote for candidates they otherwise would not have. Data mining and pooling are common in the advertising industry, often being used to target people of interest with new car ads but never has data mining been used to sway elections. Using political advertising is not unlawful, but infringing upon people’s right to privacy is. Cambridge Analytica weaponized voters' personal data while Facebook remained complacent with its efforts to undermine our democracy. Sadly enough, the Cambridge Analytica scandal is not an isolated event; tech companies browse through our data all the time.
Amazon not only tracks what purchases you make but also traces your current whereabouts and what sites you've visited before and after using the Amazon website. This not only happens on the web browsers we use but follows us all the way down to the apps we have on our phones. 70% of smartphone apps share personal information uploaded to them through third party companies such as Google and Facebook. These third party tracking companies then use our data to target us with specific advertising. What’s more disturbing is that the majority of tracked personal data is transported across our national borders into countries with looser privacy laws such as China. Having such feeble privacy laws allow states such as China to obtain large databases of personal information on prominent individuals that have access to classified information, thereby posing a direct threat to the integrity of our democracy.
Critics of regulation often reference that if we were to implement more stringent privacy laws, companies such as Facebook would have to start charging for services, as they primarily get their revenue from advertising. This all dwindles down to one essential question:
How much of our privacy are we willing to give up for our convenience?
Is the threat of an unstable regime like that of China exploiting its Muslim popluation via mass surveillance enough to sound the alarms? How many more Cambridge Analytics must occur before we decide enough is enough?
Big Tech corporations also take advantage of their tremendous market shares. For example, look at Google. It was recently under fire for engaging in anticompetitive business practices. Meaning, Google deliberately skewed search results to favor its own shopping and finance sites over its competitors. In addition, it plagiarized information from its competitors, such as Yelp, and threatened to remove it from its platform if it refused to comply. By definition, this is the perfect example of a monopoly. To add a cherry on top of this already appalling array of business practices, Google and Facebook have a combined total of 362 mergers and acquisitions, granting them incredibly unbalanced market shares in their respective industries. An estimated 90% of all internet searches happen on Google, while more than half of social media site visits occur on Facebook. These lucrative tech corporations buy out their less established competitors, leaving them with no room for expansion so that they can grow and obtain unbridled market share powers. To add salt to the wound, after buying out their competition, these large tech companies often put a hold on any new innovation that smaller startups they bought were working on. There’s a reason all iPhones have practically the same design and little difference in function.
An all too common response to the monopolizing power of big tech is that regulation inhibits inventiveness.
These companies worked hard for their widespread influence so shouldn’t they be able to reap the benefits of their hard work? I mean, that’s what the American dream is about anyways, right? Of course, companies should be able to expand on the basis of their merits but not at the expense of competition and equal opportunity, which is exactly what companies like Facebook and Google are attempting to eradicate. That’s like trying to race Usain Bolt after he got a 20 second head start on you. It's a rigged race and near impossible feat. Outdated antitrust legislation has squandered new competition from entering the tech domain and hindered technological innovation, which deserves to be remedied.
Lastly, big tech corporations condone the spread of misinformation. Social media has long been used by many as a source of primary news. While this sounds harmful and misguided, for many working middle class Americans, it’s far easier to see news on Facebook than take the time to read long articles from respected news publications and then go about the trouble of fact checking them. A Pew Research study reports that 62% of American adults get their news from a technology platform. What’s even more concerning is that 86% of all internet users are unable to differentiate legitimate facts from fictitious claims.
In the midst of a global pandemic, the effects of rampant misinformation are now felt harder than ever. Social media has amplified conspiracy theories-such as that of QAnon and ill informed government leaders- regarding COVID-19, downplaying the virus as just another flu and encouraging bogus treatments. The Plandemic video, featuring a host of COVID-19 conspiracies, received more than 8 million views before eventually being taken down. As legitimate health experts and conspiracy theorists vie for the attention of the masses, the public has been left disillusioned and unprepared to face the harsh realities of the pandemic.
In addition, these misinformation campaigns, often including degenerative race myths, mostly recently directed at those of Chinese heritage, advance racist and xenophobic tendenices by normalizing bigotry towards select groups of people. The real victor of misinformation campaigns is domestic terror threats like that of white supremacy. There has been a 55% increase in white nationalist groups since 2017, totaling to about 940 groups in 2019. Social media has often been used to digitize hate groups, allowing for both white supremacists and international terror threats alike to spread their hateful messages and radicalize younger populations. To make matters worse, the hate spread on social media too often converts into violence.
One identified common factor across all mass shootings is the fact that shootings are inspired acts, meaning that hateful and marginalizing posts or content, often directed at minorities, push shooters toward perpetrating the unthinkable. For example, just moments before the El Paso shooting, the shooter wrote a hate-filled, xenophobic manifesto. Who knows how many others found comfort and inspiration in his violence-inducing call for action? Hate speech leads to hate crimes which then inspires more hate speech leading to more hate crimes. Thus the cycle of normalizing violence and death continues. Lack of regulation has allowed for technology platforms to become hotbeds of fake news and the nexus of violent incitements.
However, all hope is not lost. Recently tech companies such as Twitter have begun to crack down more harshly on misleading tweets, which can be observed through their swift action in taking down anti-Black Lives Matter tweets. Yet, to truly combat the horridites of misinformation, there must be widespread agreement on regulation, as well as an independent regulatory body that is not government or tech affiliated. The cost of this mixed messaging is people’s lives.
Through allowing for the continuation of unmoderated content, we’re undermining people’s constitutional right to life.
With the advent of newer and more powerful technologies, it seems as if we've now entered into a Big Tech Gilded Age, with the future of technology left to the will of the duplicit few and the rest left without a say in the matter. New technology has warranted regulation, since the beginning. Looking back to the First Industrial Revolution, more efficient, mechanized means of production and substantial changes in transportation led to more government regulation through the passage of labor laws to protect exploited workers and preserve the sanctity of our environment.
Now fast forward to today. Recently the Big 4 (Apple, Facebook, Alphabet, and Amazon) virtually testified before Congress as a part of an ongoing investigation into these companies’ dominance within their respective fields. Other than this hearing on the monopolized power of Big Tech, the only other form of actual regulation these companies have ever faced came from the EU this February. There has been widespread agreement among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as Big Tech companies themselves about the necessity of regulation, making this not a question of regulation but a matter of how. There is no shortage of solutions for the problem of regulation. Some claim that a breakup of these companies is the only real answer; however, a breakup would just rearrange the concentration of power and not solve for the ever-increasing market imbalances as in the case of Microsoft in the 1990s. Many think the solution requires an independent body that would moderate content. Others claim that data sharing between different companies, nondiscriminatory policy requirements, data interoperability, or a mixture of all three could solve for unequal market shares. Apart from widespread agreement and a multitude of potential solutions, what’s missing from this near perfect recipe for regulation is the lack of execution.
The problem is Big Tech wants regulation but on their own terms. They’re ramping up their lobbying efforts as we speak, while Congress, sharing a rare moment of agreement, still can’t seem to decide on what regulatory measure they want to implement and to what degree. The effectively applied government regulation of the 1800s, a time of grandiose new innovations, draws a stark contrast to today, in which tech corporations face little to no repercussions for their unlawful conducts. The time is ripe for regulatory policy, but all one can hope for now is that inefficiency doesn’t squander it.
Sources
Cover Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
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