It is a well established fact that personal digital data has no boundaries. Many of us know that the data we provide – in some cases voluntarily but in most cases unintentionally – to Google, Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp and similar apps and services is controlled by corporations that must Not located within the borders of the country. We will be using them. Governments around the world have recognized it. They are intensifying their efforts to control the digital information produced by their government agencies, companies and citizens. Driven by national economic interests, as well as national security and privacy concerns of their citizens, governments are increasingly setting rules and standards for how data can and cannot move around the world. Their goal is to achieve ‘digital sovereignty’.
As I have written about earlier in this space, effective control over user data, if it ever happens, can act as a new trade barrier around the world. Unlike the rest of us, the Chinese won’t find this particularly disturbing. China has built a ‘Great Wall’ around its domestic Internet companies many years ago. This wall largely kept out Western firms such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Uber through harsh laws and other market moves. Facebook is banned outright in China, as are many other Western services.
For most people in the democratic world (read outside China), new restrictions to shut down popular websites are unlikely. But users may lose access to certain services or features depending on where they live.
It seems to be the ‘catastrophic stupidity’ of our era that allows this. Umair Haq, in a blog post titled ‘Age of the Imbecile’, which appeared on the website Medium.com nearly four years ago, defines our current age as “devastatingly stupid”. The piece of entitlement was widespread; It touched upon many socio-economic and political issues and scolded the readers by saying that it was us, the world over, who foolishly chose it all and made our present world one of “vainness, emptiness and hollowness”. Therefore our stupidity is “disastrous”, according to Haque.
Leaving aside the perceived folly of citizens, nation states have recognized the need for control of their people’s data. The European Union took the lead with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force 4 years ago on 25 May 2018, to enhance the privacy rights of 740 million Europeans. However, it seems that very little has been done so far. Wired magazine reports that data rights non-profit Noyb (noyb.eu/en) filed its first complaints under Europe’s major data regulation on the same day. These complaints allege that Google, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram forced people to give up their data without obtaining proper consent.
The magazine says Noyb is still waiting to make a final decision. According to it, “four years after the GDPR went into effect, data regulators working to enforce the law have struggled to act quickly on complaints against Big Tech firms and the counterfeit online advertising industry, which still has Many cases are outstanding. While the GDPR has significantly improved the privacy rights of millions in and outside Europe, it hasn’t stamped out the worst of the problems: data brokers still stocking your information and selling it , and the online advertising industry is littered with potential abuse.
Meanwhile, The New York Times paints a contrasting picture. It added that the EU GDPR has had an extraordinarily wide-ranging impact and countries have shut down. For example, it says that in France and Austria, customers of Google’s Internet measurement software, Google Analytics, which many websites use to collect audience data, have been asked not to use the program this year. Gone because it could expose the personal data of Europeans. American espionage. And last year, the French government canceled a deal with Microsoft to handle healthcare data after officials criticized it for awarding the contract to a US firm. European authorities have instead promised to work with local firms.
However, in my opinion, none of the approaches to GDPR and similar legislation in other countries is completely correct, as the truth lies somewhere in between. Interestingly, I think the biggest impact in this realm came with the release of iOS 14.5 last year with Apple’s move to block cross-site tracking and delegating options to the consumer instead of big tech giants like Facebook. Shares fell shortly after the release of Apple’s updated operating software in mid-2021, when Facebook-owned Meta Platform warned that its third-quarter performance (on a calendar-year basis) was due to low ad conversions related to that move. but) may face significant headwinds. Then in September, an executive at a Facebook subsidiary said that the privacy change had reduced reports of conversions, further plunging its shares. In February 2022, Facebook said that Apple’s app tracking transparency feature would cut the company’s sales this year by about $10 billion, a figure much bigger than anyone could imagine.
There will be a lot of jockeying in this space before nation states find common ground, and it is likely that, at least to some extent, we will see the rise of the ‘national’ internet. In my view, however, it is much more likely that there will be an explosion within because of the internal corporate war between Big Tech’s Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google’s FAANG group.
Siddharth Pai is the co-founder of Siana Capital, and the author of “Takeproof Me,” a guide for professionals navigating today’s warp-speed technological changes.