The power of Big Tech companies

9

October

2021

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How does social media impact our world? The use of social media has highly increased over the years, and you would almost forget how it was without it. But on the 4th of October 2021 people around the world had a glimpse of how a world without social media would look like. A global outage took place and Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram and Whatsapp were down for more than six hours. More than 3.5 billion people around the world rely on these platforms for communication with friends and families or for running their businesses.

Additionally, Frances Haugen, a former employee of Facebook, revealed that same week how the company is causing harm by providing evidence to lawmakers, regulators and the news media.

The abovementioned outage and the revelations brought to light from whistleblower Frances Huagen not only showed how dependent the world has become on social media but also added fuel to the fire; the ever-growing power of big tech companies and the way those companies deal with harm caused by their platforms.

Companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple all provide digital services and those have ingrained in our lives that it is almost impossible to avoid them. Some argue that this succes comes with responsibility and increasingly people are questioning if those companies are living up to this responsibility. Two critical points are: How do Big Tech companies protect the privacy of their users? and to what extent can they be held liable for what is happening on their platform?

According to Haugen companies like Facebook and Instagram use amplification algorithms and engagement-based raking that is leading children and teenagers to harmful online content without trying to solve this issue because of the profit it’s earning. Haugen recommends reforming Section 230 that protects companies from liability for third-party content on their platform. She argues that the government has to step in and companies should be held responsible for the consequences of their algorithms. Even though something has to change, one my ask oneself if government oversight is the right solution. The government regulating algorithms of tech companies could influence journalism and free speech and what consequences would that have?

References

Alter, C. (2021, October 6). How Fixing Facebook’s Algorithm Could Help Teens—and Democracy. Time. https://time.com/6104157/facebook-testimony-teens-algorithm/?utm_source=roundup&utm_campaign=20210929

Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com). (2021). Why Big Tech is under fire around the world | DW | 16.04.2021. DW.COM. https://www.dw.com/en/why-big-tech-is-under-fire-around-the-world/av-57230952

Isaac, M., & Frenkel, S. (2021, October 8). Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Were Down: Here’s What to Know. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/technology/facebook-down.html

Mac, R., & Kang, C. (2021, October 6). Whistle-Blower Says Facebook ‘Chooses Profits Over Safety.’ The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/technology/whistle-blower-facebook-frances-haugen.html#:%7E:text=Frances%20Haugen%2C%20a%20Facebook%20product,documents%20to%20journalists%20and%20others.&text=%5BWatch%20the%20Facebook%20hearing%20live.%5D

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Big tech in big trouble?

10

October

2020

No ratings yet. The American house of representatives has concluded that big tech companies such as Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon have misused their dominant position on a big scale. Hence, that is the reason that the American commission advocated for the split of Big Tech companies alike. However, what exactly did these tech giants do wrong?

The digital business model of tech giants

With regard to digital business models, the observation can be made that these big tech companies (Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook) are ecosystem drivers as they provide a platform to conduct business (Weil & Woerner, 2020). Furthermore, they have complete knowledge about their customer by the amounts of data they generated about their customers. It is interesting to see that certain of these technology companies (such as Amazon) gained significance by disrupting the market while pursuing a long-tail strategy (Hillesund, 2007).

The problem

The commission deems to prove that Google (regarding search engines) and Facebook (concerning Social Media) became monopolists through unauthorized practices. Furthermore, researchers claim that Amazon and Apple have “lasting and significant market power” that they partly forced by locking out competition through their platforms (De Tijd, 2020). The logical consequence is that competitors are discouraged to innovate. Thereafter, the privacy position of consumers is jeopardized by the dominant position of a handful of tech companies.  It also becomes more difficult to find truthful news if only a few big companies are the spreaders of it.

Examples of wrongdoings

The report claims that Amazon frequently uses third-party sellers to assist in improving and selling their own products. Apple uses its presiding market position to benefit its own applications and hamper those made by rivals. Facebook preserved its monopoly through a chain of anti-competitive business practices. Specifically, it bought up potential rivals such as Instagram. The report states that Google had demanded smartphone manufacturers using its Android operating system should install Google’s chrome as its standard web browser (www.ft.com, 2020).

It can be concluded that Big tech companies did not always use the right means to obtain their market position. Obviously, the big tech companies have responded in a disapproving manner (RTL Nieuws, 2020). This raises some questions for me to you, the reader.

 

Do you think the report was fair and just? Do you think it is beneficial to society that these tech companies have so much market power? If sanctions are imposed, do you think these tech companies should be split up or do you think other sanctions must come into place? Which other sanctions should come into place?

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De Tijd. (2020). Amerikaanse commissie pleit voor opsplitsing Big Tech. [online] Available at: https://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/technologie/amerikaanse-commissie-pleit-voor-opsplitsing-big-tech/10256341.html [Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].

Hillesund, T. (2007). Reading Books in the Digital Age subsequent to Amazon, Google and the long tail. First Monday. [online] Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/11250/184283 [Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].

RTL Nieuws. (2020). Commissie VS wil techreuzen opsplitsen: Big Tech is te machtig. [online] Available at: https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/tech/artikel/5188715/commissie-vs-pleit-voor-opsplitsen-big-tech [Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].

Weil, P. Woerner, S.L. (2015). Thriving in an Increasingly Digital Ecosystem. [online] MIT Sloan Management Review. Available at: http://mitsmr.com/1BkdvAq [Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].

www.ft.com. (2020). Subscribe to read | Financial Times. [online] Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/ccf00858-30a2-49d3-9ae9-7db3f58773b0 [Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].

 

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‘Techlash’ – Did Corona solve Big Tech’s challenge?

18

September

2020

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After repeated scandals at big tech companies such as Google and Facebook, ‘Techlash’ became the Financial Times’ Year in a Word 2018. It represents the loss of trust and growing hostility of the public towards large platform technology providers such as the Faangs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) and the Chinese Bats (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent). Issues revolved around privacy violations and election manipulation for instance and the consequence was a drop in share prices.

Word In a Year 2018 - Financial Times
Word In a Year 2018 – Financial Times

 

In 2019 the question was thus how these firms were going to react to regain their customers’ trust. Most companies were dreading more regulations, which would affect their business models and most likely entail a fall in stock prices similar to 2018. The Economist identified some of the most popular ideas that were being considered to control the companies’ influence, including breaking them up and preventing further acquisitions. Additionally, the threat of a trade war became apparent with altercations between the U.S. and China.

Big tech firms were facing a considerable challenge and there was no obvious solution to it. Nevertheless, in 2020 – the covid-19 year – Financial Times published an article claiming the techlash was over. They argued that despite the persistence of bad press and regulations around tech firms, they provide consumers with products they want. The incredible results of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and even Tesla, as well as the success of Disney’s streaming platform have confirmed this shift and lifted any worry of a saturated market. Similarly, Wired sees a turning point and specifically mentions Facebook – which was considered the poster child for techlash – as profiting from corona.

FAANG's unprecedented growth in the crisis year
FAANG’s unprecedented growth in the crisis year

 

It is argued that while the public has not forgotten about their past mistakes, the focus has shifted onto the companies’ current actions. For instance, Facebook has become a comforter during social distancing, Google has greatly contributed in terms of Covid-19 testing and Amazon has become consumers’ personal supply chain. Among the pandemic, it is one of the only industries that did not falter, the firms have helped the economy stay afloat and kept people connected to one another. Rather than facing more regulation, the pressure for antitrust seems to fade compared to fighting the issues, there is even talk of relaxing certain policies.

The question remains however, with unprecedented billion-dollar fines for tech companies in recent years, has the techlash really been solved or is corona simply putting it on hold? Will tech companies take advantage of their current position to better themselves or will they have to face an even more substantial backlash in the future?

What does it mean for the future?
What does it mean for the future?

 

Comment down below what you believe will most likely happen and what attitude you have towards the FAANGs and their growing importance. If you are interested and want to dive deeper, here are some interesting sources about the topic.

Sources

https://www.ft.com/content/a49b002a-4997-11ea-aee2-9ddbdc86190d

https://www.ft.com/content/76578fba-fca1-11e8-ac00-57a2a826423e

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/01/20/the-techlash-against-amazon-facebook-and-google-and-what-they-can-do

https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/covid-and-the-future-of-techlash/

https://www.wired.com/story/plaintext-has-the-coronavirus-killed-the-techlash/

https://www.politico.eu/article/tech-policy-competition-privacy-facebook-europe-techlash/

 

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Tristan Harris has a message for you

19

September

2019

5/5 (3) Ever found yourself falling down a deep Youtube rabbit hole? Ever compared yourself to influencers on Instagram and Pinterest? Ever been overwhelmed on Twitter by election campaigns? Then Harris has a story to tell you.

 

Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, ‘the conscience of Silicon Valley’ and the man behind the ‘Time Well Spent’ movement (Harris, 2019), has co-founded a new non-profit organisation called the Center for Humane Technology (CHT). You might ask: ‘why is this important to me?’ – Let me tell you.

 

Harris is a former Design Ethicist Engineer at Google, where he realised how much power Big Tech companies hold as their business models are built to capture the attention of humans (Johnson, 2019). More alarmingly, he recognised how these companies have the power to shape millions of people’s minds, yet, according to Harris, they are not taking enough moral responsibility for this. Harris explains how technology is manipulating our instincts through what he calls “the race to the bottom of the brain stem” and how the biggest problem in this is our “attention economy” (Thompson, 2019; Rouse and Wigmore, 2019b).

 

See it this way; an abundance of information has created a scarcity of attention, and any resource that is scarce is worth money (Newton, 2019). So companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are built to compete in a commercial race for people’s attention (Johnson, 2019). An example of this can be YouTube’s business model: the longer they can get you to watch videos, the more views you generate. Views mean more ads were seen, so the longer they capture your attention, the more companies are willing to pay for them to run their ads. This is how most Big Tech companies are making their money (Johnson, 2019).

 

Not only is our attention worth money, attention is also what steers politics, builds relationships, decides elections and creates culture. What Harris is trying to clarify is that if Big Tech companies are directing what we pay attention to, don’t they then, in effect, dictate our culture? This is one of the big issues that Harris is trying to bring into the light: “Tech addiction, polarization, outrage-ification of culture, the rise in vanities and micro-celebrity culture are all, in fact, symptoms of a larger disease: the race to capture human attention by giants” (Johnson, 2019).

 

These symptoms are all contributory to a phenomenon called ‘human downgrading’, a term coined by Harris and his co-workers at the CHT (Rouse and Wigmore, 2019a). Human downgrading is the combined negative effects of digital technology on people and society  (Thompson, 2019). Harris explains that while our data was being used to upgrade machines, it has downgraded peoples’ civility, decency, democracy, mental health, relationships, attention and more. So even though Big Tech is working hard on making technology smarter, they are indirectly making all of us dumber, meaner and more alienated (Johnson, 2019). Harris has explained human downgrading by describing it as the social climate change of culture (Center for Humane Technology, 2019). Similarly, it can be catastrophic, however the difference is that only a few companies need to change to alter its trajectory. That is those companies that are creating the technologies which are causing these issues: the artificial social environments, the overpowering AIs and algorithms that sense and exploit our vulnerabilities (Johnson, 2019).

 

So how does Harris plan on solving this ‘human downgrading’? Back in May, he discussed this on an episode of Vox’s podcast: Recode Decode (Johnson, 2019). The short answer: design and regulation. However, it is more sophisticated than that. Harris starts with explaining that the answer is not as simple as just turning technology off. Since people spend almost a fourth of their lives in artificial social systems, these digital environments have become an important daily habitat for almost 2 billion people worldwide (Johnson, 2019; How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day | Tristan Harris, 2017). And even those who don’t participate on social media platforms will have to deal with the consequences, think of the 2016 US elections. So Harris poses the question: If people spend this much time in those digital social environments, shouldn’t these be regulated?

 

A big problem is that the data needed to assess the impact and effects of human downgrading is guarded by companies like Facebook, since they own that data (Johnson, 2019). Therefore, Harris calls the Big Tech companies, especially Google and Apple, to action in changing their ways as “the central banks of the attention economy” (Thompson, 2019). He wants them to start a race to the top, which focuses on changing tech design to “help people focus, find common ground, promote healthy childhoods, and bolster our democracy” (Newton, 2019). This is why he created the Center for Humane Technology, to create a common language and infuse the vocabulary into the minds of Silicon Valley, to start the conversation and create a shared understanding and language (Center for Humane Technology, 2019). His organisation has promised to provide a guide for organisations on how to promote more humane designs. They also started a podcast on the topic called Your Undivided Attention to provide a platform to speak about these topics (Apple Podcasts, 2019). Lastly, they will be holding a conference in 2020 to bring the right minds together to figure out how to design social systems that encourage healthy dialogue, civility and bring out the best in human nature. As Raskin, the other co-founder of the CHT put it: “We need to move away from just human-centered design to human-protection design” (Thompson, 2019).

 

Like the last wave of digital wellness awareness, it is difficult to predict whether Harris’ new Team Humanity movement catches on. Even though digital wellness is becoming more of a trend and initiatives like Apple’s Screen Time and Google’s Digital Wellbeing are a step in the right direction (Pardes, 2018), we are far from where we need to be.

 

Do you agree with Harris and think Big Tech needs to take responsibility for human downgrading? Or do you think Tristan is underestimating the capability of humans to control their technology use? Will you join Team Humanity?

 

Leave your thoughts and comments below!

 

 

Bibliography

Apple Podcasts. (2019). Your Undivided Attention on Apple Podcasts. [online] Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-undivided-attention/id1460030305 [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

 

Center for Humane Technology. (2019). Center for Humane Technology: Realigning Technology with Humanity. [online] Available at: https://humanetech.com/ [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

 

Harris, T. (2019). Tristan Harris. [online] Tristanharris.com. Available at: https://www.tristanharris.com/ [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

 

How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day | Tristan Harris. (2017). YouTube: TED.

 

Johnson, E. (2019). Tristan Harris says tech is “downgrading” humanity — but we can fix it. [online] Vox. Available at: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/6/18530860/tristan-harris-human-downgrading-time-well-spent-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast-interview [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

 

Newton, C. (2019). The leader of the Time Well Spent movement has a new crusade. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/4/24/18513450/tristan-harris-downgrading-center-humane-tech\ [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

 

Pardes, A. (2018). Quality Time, Brought to You by Big Tech. [online] Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/how-big-tech-co-opted-time-well-spent/ [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

 

Rouse, M. and Wigmore, I. (2019a). What is human downgrading?. [online] WhatIs.com. Available at: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/human-downgrading [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

 

Rouse, M. and Wigmore, I. (2019b). What is an attention economy?. [online] WhatIs.com. Available at: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/attention-economy [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

 

Thompson, N. (2019). Tristan Harris: Tech Is ‘Downgrading Humans.’ It’s Time to Fight Back. [online] Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/tristan-harris-tech-is-downgrading-humans-time-to-fight-back/ [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].

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