Society needs new approaches to govern Big Tech because it is powerful in ways we haven’t encountered before.
In 2011, a series of protests erupted across the Arab World. Western commentators saw the young, digitally connected protesters using Facebook and other digital platforms to organise and ascribed them an emancipatory power. “Cell phones and social networks allow young people to connect and organise like never before,” said President Obama in a speech on the Middle East and North Africa at the time. “And so a new generation has emerged. And their voices tell us that change cannot be denied.”
The Snowden revelations of 2013 tarnished this optimistic view. Doubt led to scepticism, then to hostility. Now, world leaders are nearly unanimous in their belief that new regulatory mechanisms are needed to contain the tech giants.
“We must impose democratic limits on the untrammelled and uncontrolled political power of the internet giants,” said EU president Ursula Von der Leyen, in a speech marking US president Joe Biden’s inauguration. “New technologies must never mean that others decide how we live our lives.”
In the US, which has traditionally resisted calls for regulatory control over the largely US-based tech giants, the debate has shifted from whether new regulation is needed to how it should be designed. And after years of explosive growth in China’s internet sector, the government is now overhauling its antitrust regime to curtail the market power of its platform giants.
Why should this be the case? Societies have encountered big businesses before, and have long-standing protections for consumers, competition, the environment and more. But, in addition to their traditional commercial power, the tech giants can be said to be powerful in new ways: they have power that derives from their mastery of digital technology and which societies do not yet have measures to contain.
This digital power can be divided into three spheres: economic power, technological power, and political power – although these overlap and interact. The very existence of digital power is not necessarily cause for concern in itself – societies are ecosystems in which various forms of power coexist. Nor does it by itself mean digital power is being wielded to the detriment of society (although there are many indications that it is). But the first step in making sure Big Tech’s power is kept in balance is to understand how it is created and used.
Big Tech’s economic power
The tech giants are all businesses with commercial aims, and their most apparent form of power is economic. Five companies (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook and Microsoft) are projected to account for a fifth of all earnings accrued by the S&P 500 by 2023 – a sign of how much economic potential is concentrated in the tech giants.
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