A prevailing narrative about the American Senate coming under Democrat control is that it “will be bad for tech”.
As a result, when the rest of the stock market rallied in the US over the past week, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook all dipped. Dipped, however, is relative to all of these brands’ share prices rising massively over the past year as they took advantage of a global migration to digital platforms.
The typical reason given for new tech pessimism, and the “dip”, is deeply instructive. With both Congress and the Senate under the control of Joe Biden, he can pursue his agenda of strengthening antitrust laws to limit the dominance of those five tech giants.
But what could be bad for tech is likely to be good for people.
In recent times, most of these companies have revealed a tenuous grip on morality, civic responsibility and good governance. Google and Facebook appear oblivious about the impact their ever-more-effective news algorithms have on mainstream media.
As much as they depend on other media for the content that floods across their platforms, driving unprecedented traffic and advertising revenue, they are also killing the goose that laid the golden content.
It can be argued that their efficiency is a mark of progress, which can also be argued is inevitable. But the reality is that, when the market is dominated so mercilessly by so few players, it is in the interest of society and of a healthy business environment to limit their dominance.
This is one of the principles of antitrust and competition law. Due to profound technology ignorance among US legislators, the principle has never been enforced. This has enabled Facebook to snap up one of its biggest potential rivals, WhatsApp. This week, as if to give a finger to antitrust, Facebook advised all WhatsApp users that, from February 8, their account information across both platforms would become available to advertisers — including contact and transaction information.
The announcement sparked a flood of online searches for alternative messaging services, such as Telegram and Signal — both of which are likely to be major beneficiaries of the move. However, Facebook faces far more than mere user migration as retaliation for the move: it provides powerful ammunition to those who have argued that Facebook should not have been allowed to acquire WhatsApp.
If Biden follows through on his agenda, Facebook may be forced to unbundle not only WhatsApp, but also the Instagram photo-sharing platform.
Few will have sympathy for Facebook.
When Donald Trump posted a video on the social network this week inciting his followers to storm the Capitol in Washington, Facebook merely included a link to election results that showed Biden was president-elect.
Moral cowardice
Only after staff pressured CEO Mark Zuckerberg was the post taken down and Trump’s Facebook account temporarily suspended. Zuckerberg’s later comment that he was “personally saddened by this mob violence” was as disingenuous as any of the dissembling excuses he has given over the past year for Facebook not enforcing its own community standards.
However, it should also be seen in the context of a general moral cowardice exhibited by technology leaders for whom profits count far more than people. While the likes of Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, along with CEO Sundar Pichai, have achieved extraordinary success in business, it has often been at the expense of those on the lowest rungs of society.
Apple knowingly continued using Chinese factories that violated its policies regarding child labour and, as recently as November, was forced to ditch the second largest iPhone manufacturer for violating labour laws. Amazon workers regularly condemn unsafe and grueling work conditions in American warehouses and shipping facilities.
This week, Google found itself in the uncustomary position of being a tech giant with a union on board, largely as a result of a perception that the company now stifles dissent and debate.
Two years ago, almost as a symbol of abandoning its ethics, it removed its original motto, “Don’t be evil”, from the preface of its code of conduct. And, of course, Facebook fiddles while communities burn.
As much as we enjoy our shiny new things, we have to understand the moral and ethical issues involved in their production. In short, efforts by legislators to rein in tech domination can only be good for people.
• Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.