Form of words:
IThe T rose deeply, small at first, and fumbled for a way to sustain itself. The world didn’t really know what to make of it at first – it was a shapeless virtual thing that was piggybacked on the Internet.
Just 30 years ago, people weren’t very interested in the Internet or anything that was on it. In fact, a quote from 1998 American economist and 2008 Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, re-surfaced by technical analyst Ben Thompson, horribly underestimated the Internet, “By 2005, it will become clear that the economy But the influence of the Internet has not been much. [that of] of the fax machine.”
And so, the world largely left the field to its own devices, because no one really thought that, in two decades, the formless Internet would be able to rule our minds and predict our behavior. will develop into a full blown giant result.
The legend of Leviathan adapted for the 21st century may also be the five-headed giant known as Big Tech (Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft), which has other smaller personal-data guzzling platforms on its hands. , legs, serve as eyes. , and Cannes to make an ever-evolving agile giant zipping around the world on the Internet as if it were a magic carpet to gain greater access and control over our lives. After using your credit card to order pizza online, you shouldn’t be surprised if you start seeing pizza ads on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, because now Big Tech ‘knows’ that you’re buying it. can. When you write a Facebook post about being sad, don’t be surprised when you start seeing ads for mental health on Google Search.
By and large, Russians were targeting American social media and PayPal users during the 2016 US elections with campaigns some thought Trump would win. In 2018, two people were killed in Assam due to rumors spread on WhatsApp. Sri Lanka shut down Facebook services and the Viber messaging app in 2018 to prevent the spread of inflammatory content following a dispute between Muslims and Sinhalese.
Russians were targeting American social media and PayPal users during the 2016 US elections with propaganda that some thought Trump would win.
No country has been left untouched by the unwanted waves of Leviathan’s influence, and no government can afford to see its citizens hurt or democratic processes tampered with. As US President Joe Biden said about social media platforms, “they are killing people”.
After years of little action to regulate tech companies, governments are showing their strength. India swiftly banned more than 59 Chinese apps, including the mega-successful TikTok, to show it would not compromise national security, even if it angered China, a key trade partner.
Then, after at least two years of revisions to the intermediary guidelines, the new gazetted rules were published in 2021, hours after a government statement firmly stated, “Social media platforms to do business in India are welcome to, but they need to abide by it. Constitution and Law of India”.
Australia enacted a new law so that Google and Facebook would have to pay news publishers because its core products such as Google Search and Facebook News Feed used content from news media but never paid news organizations for that privilege.
In the US, after its initial case was dismissed in June 2021, in August 2021 the US Federal Trade Commission again filed an antitrust case against Facebook alleging illegal practices to maintain its monopoly position. China is also lashing out at tech companies with strict data protection laws.
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don’t go down without a fight
Coming under pressure from the government does not mean that the digital leviathan will accumulate silently. Each of the big tech companies is powerful and prosperous as a sovereign nation with a market cap in the trillions. If anyone can compete with governments, it is Leviathan.
The Washington Post shows that in 2020, tech companies including Amazon, Facebook and Google spent more than US$65 million lobbying their own agendas as US officials turned the heat on the tech.
Each of the big tech companies is powerful and prosperous as a sovereign nation with a market cap in the trillions. If anyone can compete with governments, it is Leviathan.
These are companies that can afford even the most talented and well-networked people to work on their public policy and government relations in key markets. These are individuals who can influence government officials in power to take decisions in their favor by promising investment and job creation in key constituencies.
read also: China wants to subdue Internet algorithms. It’s all about national security
A new tech agreement between tech companies, government and the people
At the end of the day, what should happen is not to punish Leviathan for succeeding beyond one’s wildest imagination, but to prevent harm to people stemming from a tech platform.
No tech company imagined that their product could be harmful, but only saw that the technology could be used to create more services and increase their bottom line. This may make them thoughtless but certainly not evil demons.
Going forward, for any meaningful change to occur in the tech sector, governments must first commit to understanding how IT platforms operate so that lawmakers can better understand how to drive the sector without killing innovation. be regulated.
Tech companies need to stop being so island-oriented in their approach (is this wishful thinking?) and be clear about how their platforms work, without resorting to jargon that no one understands. That way, users and lawmakers know more about each technology platform and better understand how to navigate them. Tech platforms also need to stop manipulating user behavior. Setting the algorithm so that the user spends more time watching stimulating content may be good for the platform, but not good for the health of the user and for society as a whole.
As far as we are concerned, people understand that you should not believe everything you see online and you are not required to post all your personal details on Facebook. Above all, understand that it is now your moral obligation to stop abusing tech platforms for your own political agenda. The social fabric is just too much to perpetuate the sufferings inflicted by communally divisive posts.
The author is a senior correspondent for ThePrint. Thoughts are personal.
this article was earlier published on ORF.
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