How Big Tech is watching you
By now, politicians have come to realise how powerful a tool social media platforms can be for propagating news, both true and false. Social media cells of political parties and businessmen know very well how narratives can be shaped by concentrated and twisted messaging on social media platforms. Facebook, Youtube, Whatsapp, Twitter and others have been used extensively to win elections, foment discontent, discredit rivals and increase tensions in many already volatile environments across the world.
The big problem is that social media messaging is not a scatter-bomb approach. Armed with detailed data on users, and algorithms that use this data to get smarter with time, people can target specific vulnerable groups with false information far more effectively than earlier. And because of the nature of the social media platforms, a falsehood may go viral even before any government or authority can identify where it originated from or take counter action.
Big technology companies, many headquartered in Silicon Valley, but also others scattered across the globe, have shown very little inclination to take measures to prevent false information from being spread across their platforms. They have typically paid little heed to governments in various countries. They have become so ubiquitous and powerful that few governments have had any success in reining them in. Facebook, particularly, has shown little inclination to curb clearly misleading news from being spread through its various platforms.
Social media and false content dissemination is only one part of the issue, of course. Big tech firms — even those which are not social media platforms — collect data routinely from their consumers. Amazon, Google search, Apple, Netflix are not social media platforms which are used to spread false news or hatred. They vacuum private information of their users, tracking them even when they are not using the service they offer. The fact that people are always on the Internet allows them to do so. This data allows them to refine their services and improve them. That is the good part. The bad part is that this data also infringes on people’s privacy, can be sold to advertisers, used to rig products and services that a consumer sees first, and even be sold otherwise.
Dipayan Ghosh, director of the Digital Platforms and Democracy project at the Harvard Kennedy School, has worked in Facebook and also has been a technology policy advisor to the Obama administration. He has an excellent understanding of the nuances and dangers posed by the different consumer technology companies. In Terms of Disservice he goes into the details of business models, algorithms, platform growth and other issues. The book is an excellent primer to understand the dangers posed by Big Tech and also why current laws are unable to address the issues.
He suggests a two-pronged approach — delinking content regulation on platforms from the bigger issue of privacy and data gathering. Content regulations, he points out, will vary from country to country depending on their unique cultural requirements. On the other hand, economic regulations and those involving privacy and transparency are a very different discussion.
Luckily, governments around the world have started waking up to both the dangers and started working on curbing Big Tech, though the initiatives have been more of a patchwork than a unified global approach. From Australia to Europe, and from the US to China, various actions are being contemplated against Big Tech. In the US, under President Joe Biden, the Antitrust investigation and proposed action has increased — though it will be a couple of years before we will see just what the final results are. Big Tech has enormous resources for lawyers to fight till the bitter end and to stymie any move to reduce their power or break them up. In Australia and the EU, some laws have been passed though they do not cover fake news. China has moved swiftly to chastise its home grown big tech companies and billionaires. India and several other countries are moving more on content regulation than on privacy policies though the latter too are on the plate.
Over the next two years, it will become clearer whether the big tech companies have finally been brought under control. The bigger worry is that governments across the globe have also started collecting a lot of data and information on citizens. This poses its own set of dangers. This particular issue — governments collecting too much data—is not the focus of this book but perhaps the author will look at it in a later volume.
This is a good book for anyone working in the field of data misuse, privacy advocates and policy-makers working in the field. It is also good for laymen who sign on for services without realising the full consequences of the agreements they sign routinely each time an app is downloaded. It is not a difficult book to read and quite a small one — and is well worth spending some time with.