Tech giants fight battle, but could lose the war
Silicon Valley has stepped up to tackle the coronavirus pandemic in unexpected ways. Along with vast donations, the crisis is prompting US tech giants to reveal that they can, in fact, do some of the things they once claimed were impossible. Policing content and sharing data with officials has become the norm. The sector will struggle to revert to old habits when the pandemic ends.
So far, increased intervention has been praised. This week, Facebookowned messaging service WhatsApp announced plans to limit mass message forwarding to stop falsehoods about coronavirus being repeated. Twitter has relinquished its anxiety about free speech and moved swiftly to take down tweets and ban users it believed were spreading misinformation. Apple’s
App Stores, designed as open platforms, have removed non-official coronavirus apps.
The next stage will be more controversial. Governments in the west are calling on big tech to help track the virus. Such ideas are hampered by a lack of adequate testing and privacy laws. The tools provided so far are less precise than the digital tracking carried out in China and South Korea. Google’s
Covid-19 Community Mobility Report shows anonymised data from 131 countries to show how busy or quiet certain areas are. Facebook’s “Data for Good” platform offers similar tools for researchers. Neither show patterns of movement for a specific individual. But they could. If governments push tech groups to do more, they may be wary of spooking users. Both have lots of cash and user engagement is high. But advertising, the major source of sales for both companies, is plummeting. A survey by the Interactive Advertising Bureau suggested digital budgets could drop by up to 40 per cent in March and April. Neither Facebook nor Google have managed to diversify away from advertising as quickly as they would have liked. Jefferies estimates both are about to end a decade-long streak of double-digit annual revenue growth. Combined, they have lost close to US$340 billion in market value in just under two months.
To recover, Facebook and Google will need to continue their rapacious data collection. Revealing the trove of information they hold now could fuel a privacy pushback once the pandemic is over. Tech’s efforts to use its data for good are praiseworthy. But they could cost the industry long term. The Financial Times
Combined, [Google and Facebook] have lost close to US$340 billion in market value in just under two months.