Britain can lead the world in regulating big tech

Under Obama, I worked to use social media as a tool of democracy. Now I see that these firms must change

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to have done the impossible. He has brought consensus to Westminster. And he’s inspired Britain to be a global leader in technology policy without setting foot on British soil.

Of course, the cross-party alliance that he has wrought comes at his own expense. Setting aside partisan battling for once, politicians of every stripe seem to agree that the titans of digital media should take responsibility for the harms their products can cause to public health, security, privacy and much more. And it would also be nice if they paid a fair share in tax.

Despite the relentless turbulence of the Brexit debates, select committees in Parliament (led by the Tories and Liberal Democrats) have conducted serious investigations in the past few months into the social problems caused by the tech industry. Both have proposed major changes to the law. Meanwhile, the Government has promised a report that could lead to legislative action. Not to be outdone, last week

Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, gave a major speech outlining his case for holding tech companies to account, praising the work of his Tory colleagues along the way.

What is remarkable is not merely the rarity of consensus, it is the heft of the ideas that have united politicians. What they are proposing is not a half measure that tackles the smallest part of a big issue. They have uncovered a hive of interrelated problems – the safety of children online, the security and integrity of elections, the privacy of citizens and the social consequences of a digital world ruled by unaccountable monopolies.

No single solution is sufficient. To meet the scope of the challenge, lawmakers have proposed a duty of care for social media (a cause long championed in these pages). It is a simple concept – tried and true in British common law – that carries a lot of power.

The duty of care would establish a broad responsibility for social media companies to reduce the harms they cause to the public and empower a regulator to set and enforce rules that rebalance the power between their sector and society. Getting the details right is no easy task, but the level of ambition is impressive.

In this bold approach to putting the public in control of technology, Britain leads the world. No other country has proposed anything quite like it. And if the UK acts, it is likely that others will follow – including the European Union and the United States.

I believe that Britain has it right here. But I did not reach this conclusion lightly. I have spent most of my career advocating for unfettered markets for speech and commerce online. I believe deeply in the potential of connection technologies to empower democratic social movements, expand access to knowledge and provide opportunity for economic mobility.

In the first Obama administration, I served as a foreign policy adviser working to leverage America’s technology and innovation as instruments of democracy. Though we were conscious of the potential abuses of digital media for social control and political propaganda, we felt that the benefits outweighed the downsides. And they did for the most part.

But in the past few years things have changed. Firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are now among the most valuable companies in history. Their products reach into every corner of modern society. Meanwhile, advances in artificial intelligence have enabled a big leap forward in data collection, analysis, and the targeting of communications to predict and shape individual preferences and actions.

The profits reaped from manipulating consumer behaviour are extraordinary. But there is a darker side. These business models do not effectively block organised efforts to exploit their products in ways that harm the public. As a result, our children are not steered out of harm’s way when they go online.

Data about every aspect of our lives is vacuumed up and used in ways that most of us never imagined. And our public debates are distorted through artificial amplification techniques on social media available to the highest bidder. These are serious and systemic problems.

So what now? Multinationals with market power are not going to police themselves. This is why the only solution is for government to set rules, to guide the power of technology markets to realign business and social interests – to make it clear that the best way for companies and investors to do well is to do good.

Britain is leading the world towards sensible answers to these problems. The only question is whether this moment of political unity will hold and party leaders will maintain the courage of their convictions. Stay on target, Britain.

Ben Scott is director of policy & advocacy at Luminate, a philanthropic organisation established by Pierre Omidyar, founder of ebay. He was an adviser to the US secretary of state during the Obama administration

Duty of care