USA – Social Blog

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Social media companies like Google and Facebook bear increasingly more responsibility in our society as they grow in size and influence. Even though they’re platforms and services were not designed to specifically manipulate or steer public opinion, they are increasingly confronted with the reality that they are. From seemingly minor issues such as political campaign emails being marked as “spam” in a prospective voters Google mail account (Newton, 2020) to concerns that algorithms, with the help of content moderators, on Facebook or Youtube are unfairly removing conservative content (Romm, 2020) these big tech companies are already under scrutiny in the United States from both major political parties. The irony of this criticism lies in the fact that these companies were left largely unregulated by the same government criticizing them today. Its due to this lack of regulation within the industry, that big tech companies focused the development of their algorithms towards narrow goals of maximizing users attention as this would allow them to make more money from advertisement because they can show more adds to users. Combining this business incentive with the goal of increasing the effects of network externalities explains how companies like Google and Facebook got into this situation. This unfettered pursuit to maximize user attention, has led to the proliferation of social media in society and has enabled a level of polarization today which is unprecedented in the history of the USA (DellaPosta, 2020).

In efforts to reduce the pressure governments put on them, Google and Facebook have developed more comprehensive policies for content moderation, working with policy makers and independent organizations. Facebook alone has committed to hiring 15,000 content moderators to enforce them (Thomas, 2020). Effectively this has transformed both media giants to becoming an independent online police force, with policies as its laws, and content moderators as its police force. Even though these policies were developed with key stakeholders in government, it raises questions around how society is, and should, function as governmental responsibilities become increasingly intertwined with big tech firms operations. Although governments are responsible for enforcing rules around freedom of speech, effectively this is done more and more by tech companies. From a radical point of view, these practices are undemocratic as big tech companies operate without oversight of elected officials, however, it can nevertheless be argued that these measures are necessary in the short term to allow policy makers to catch up and regulate the industry.

As social media platforms increasingly become the medium through which democratic societies express their opinions, they effectively become tools which can steer opinion. Because of this reality, I believe that governments should play a larger role in regulating these companies to create rules with penalties, as well as incentives, to reduce the polarization social media. One of the possible ways this could be done is by creating clear rules around content and advertising which similarly already apply to newspapers and network providers. However, these rules would also need to be enforced with financial penalties, such has social media companies having to pay back money they received for inappropriate content or advertising. The question ultimately arises: how long can the US government, and other governments around the world, allow social media companies to continue to self-regulate themselves? The time is ticking, and will likely not be much longer after the 2020 US election.

References:

DellaPosta, D. (2020) ‘Pluralistic Collapse: The “Oil Spill” Model of Mass Opinion Polarization’, American Sociological Review, 85(3), pp. 507–536. doi: 10.1177/0003122420922989.

Newton, C. (2020). ‘The tech antitrust hearing was good, actually’, The Verge, 30 July. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/7/30/21346575/tech-antitrust-hearing-recap-bezos-zuckerberg-cook-pichai (Accessed: 9 October 2020).

Romm, T. (2020). ‘Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google grilled on Capitol Hill over their market power’, The Washington Post, 30 July. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2ftechnology%2f2020%2f07%2f29%2fapple-google-facebook-amazon-congress-hearing%2f (accessed: 9 October 2020).

Thomas, Z. (2020). ‘Facebook content moderators paid to work from home, BBC, 18 March. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/7/30/21346575/tech-antitrust-hearing-recap-bezos-zuckerberg-cook-pichai (Accessed: 9 October 2020).

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After having read the news article ‘Supreme court will hear U.S.-Microsoft battle over email’ on the website of USA today, I started wondering about the question whether data should be location-bound or not (USA Today, 2017).

Using this ‘battle’ as example, I would like to discuss the topic of globalization of data and share my thoughts on it in this blog. But firstly, let me give a brief summary of the U.S vs. Microsoft case: The FBI requested to see email stored by Microsoft for an investigation. However, Microsoft claims that the FBI does not have the authority to request that, since the email are stored on a database in Ireland and therefore are not on American soil. Both Microsoft and the U.S. government have been ruled in favour by different judges, so now the upper court is going to take on the case and make a final ruling.

There are three different viewpoints regarding this case:
(1) People who believe the supreme court should rule in favour of the U.S government.
(2) People who believe the supreme court should rule in favour of Microsoft.
(3) People who believe the supreme court should not have taken on this case at all.

So, why do these groups believe they are right and the others are not?

The first group says that it is the government’s responsibility to investigate and prosecute crimes and to fend off terrorism and other kinds of threats to national security. By not being able to get a hold of those emails, this group believes the government won’t be able to do this and thus is it a threat to national security and public safety. They claim that this will make it easy for terrorist to avoid the US government, because they simply need to make sure their messages are stored in databases which are not located in the US (Reuters, 2017).

The second group claims that if the US government will be able to receive information about non-US citizens which is stored outside the US, this can also be done by other countries to US citizens. Also, they believe that this would interfere with the privacy of citizens and that countries should respect each other’s sovereignty (Bloomberg, 2017).

The third group believes that courts cannot come up with a suitable ruling for this case based on the current legislation. They claim that congress should first come up with new legislation that is more suitable for the time we live in, since the current legislation on this topic is still from the time of the floppy disc (USA Today, 2017).

Personally, I think that data should be location bound to the country where it is stored due to privacy reasons and that governments should work together to ward off terrorism. Meaning that this kind of information only gets shared when both countries agree that it is relevant for the investigation, instead of the US government being able to retrieve all information stored by American companies. Especially since these American companies, like Google and Microsoft, are active in so many countries and possess so much information about citizens of those countries. What about you? What are your thoughts on this topic?

Hurley, L. (2017, October 16). U.S. Supreme Court decide major Microsoft email privacy fight. Retrieved October 16, 2017, from reuters.com: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-microsoft/u-s-supreme-court-to-decide-major-microsoft-email-privacy-fight-idUSKBN1CL20U

Stohr, G. (2017, October 16). Microsoft Email-Access Fight with U.S. Gets Top Court Review. Retrieved October 16, 2017, from Bloomberg.com: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/microsoft-email-access-fight-with-u-s-gets-supreme-court-review

Wolf, R. (2017, October 16). Supreme Court will hear U.S.-Microsoft battle over emails. Retrieved October 16, 2017, from usatoday.com: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/16/supreme-court-hear-u-s-microsoft-battle-over-emails/761346001/

The Globalisation of Data

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