Sentiment: The backlash to the techlash
It’s fashionable to complain about technology, said Rob Walker in The New York Times, but the evidence suggests “we love our devices as much as ever.” Smart-home tech such as the Ring video-doorbell system continues to fly off shelves; Amazon says it has sold 100 million Alexa devices. Last quarter, Twitter added 5 million new daily users, while Snapchat grew by 7 percent. Even Facebook added 8 percent to its daily user base, growing it to 1.59 billion people worldwide, even though “it’s hard to imagine a more backlashable company.” The fact is that “we really, really like much of what technology has to offer,” and most of us are “willing to overlook significant potential downsides in exchange for rather trivial payoffs.”
Adding up Facebook’s user numbers isn’t the only way to measure consumer sentiment, said Casey Newton in TheVerge.com, and if you look, the signs of a change are everywhere. The Cambridge Analytics scandal caused so much outrage that it forced Facebook to say it would “pivot to privacy.” There are “two congressional, six state and local, and eight federal investigations now underway” regarding the monopolistic practices of Big Tech. And a Pew Research survey recently found that negative views of technology have almost doubled from 17 percent to 33 percent in four years. The public has made its feelings clear enough that “if you’re an up-and-coming prosecutor or politician, you better have a plan to go after Big Tech,” said Eric Newcomer in Bloomberg.com. In Washington, “beating up on the tech industry is the rare bipartisan issue in a hyperpartisan age.” As with Microsoft in the 1990s, federal inquiries alone can put companies on the defensive and curb some of their aggressive practices.
“Non-elite opinion about Big Tech has darkened a bit,” said James Pethokoukis in TheWeek.com, but the unhappiness is really not much more than a “nebulous hand wave.” Critics of Big Tech are sure that consumers are sticking with Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple only because those companies are so dominant that you “can’t quit them.” In actuality, though, we know little about what consumers want. Yes, surveys find that Americans want to break up Amazon and Google “when told doing so ensures more competition in the future.” But what if things don’t work out that nicely? “Would breakups be so popular if the respondents were told they might lead to higher prices and worse service?” If Washington pushes too far, politicians should get ready for the backlash to the backlash.