“Big Technology companies Facebook, Google and Amazon
March 2021, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic,
four of Europe's most powerful women
sent a letter to Brussels. It included a dire warning. The pandemic had shown how much the EU depends on foreign technology, they wrote — and this needs to change. Their language was diplomatic — but the underlying message was clear: It’s time to rein in Big Tech. “Tech giants will have to change the way they do business…” "…an unprecedented amount of pressure…” “A Day of Reckoning…” "Mr. Zuckerberg, I just want a Yes or No answer. Mr. Pica, Yes or No?" Governments around the globe have set their eyes on the world’s largest tech companies. But how did Big Tech come under so much fire? And how did it get so “Big” in the first place? We might not always notice
it — but technology is all around us. We use it to communicate, to get information, to organize our lives. And almost all that technology is made by private companies. This has given rise to an industry known as Big Tech. And within this industry, four companies have become especially powerful: Alphabet — which owns Google — Amazon, Facebook and Apple. In fact, they’re so big now they’re known as the “Big Four,” or by their acronym “GAFA.” Those “Big Four” actually run fairly different businesses. But what they have in common is that they provide digital services —
and they have become so ingrained in our lives that it’s almost impossible to avoid them. Take me, for example: My phone is made by Apple. And when I use it to surf the internet, that traffic likely runs through servers owned by Amazon. Or let’s talk about you: There’s a good chance you’re watching this video on YouTube, which is owned by Google. And you might have come across it on Facebook. The point is: Big Tech is everywhere. And this has made the companies very, very rich. While the coronavirus forced many businesses to down shutters and plunged the world economy into a recession,
Big Tech is reporting enormous profits. The stock prizes of all Big Four have skyrocketed: Some, like Apple’s, doubled in value since the beginning of the pandemic But many would argue that this success comes with responsibility — and increasingly, people are asking if … "…those company are living up to that responsibility?" “No, and I don't think we should expect of Big Tech to be benevolent.” “They have been trying but it’s really hard.“ “The answer to that depends on where you are talking from.” Let’s untangle this. The core criticism of Big Tech comes down to four points: It’s about how the companies: —protect the privacy of their users —can be held liable for what’s happening on their platforms —pay their taxes and —how they treat their competitors
And when it comes to the first point — privacy — Big Tech has been under fire for years. But it wasn’t always that way: The birth of Big Tech dates back to the Silicon Valley of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when most of the companies were founded. Their missions were ambitious: The startups were out to disrupt the status quo, Connect people and give them unprecedented access to information. And when a decade later, protests spread across the Arab world, many saw that as proof for how the technology could, indeed, be a force for democracy. And it was. But what people didn’t pay much attention to was how Big Tech actually makes money: Most of the companies got big by providing free services — while, in exchange, collecting data about their users and selling ads.
And another couple of years later, the Cambridge Analytical scandal helped many understand that this very data could also be used to manipulate them. When reports emerged that a consultancy had mined information about millions of Facebook users to influence how they voted in the UK’s Brexit Referendum and the 2016 US election, that changed how people looked at Big Tech.
“Especially in the United States, I think, for a long time, it was seen as a source of strength. But the idea that there could be groups inside the United States that were using those alleged champions of the United States to turn Their pride into a vulnerability, has really hit home for a lot of Americans. "Since then, stricter data protection laws have been passed around the world. The full truth is that they haven’t always been enforced. But increasingly, regulators and courts are doing just that — and that’s one reason why Big Tech is feeling the heat.
The second one is that more attention is paid
to Liability — the question of who’s responsible for what’s
being said or done on the platforms run by Big Tech. “Supporters of
US President Trump have Stormed the Capitol building to support
his latest effort to overturn his election defeat” It’s a question
experts have been debating for years. But it only moved to the front
pages when in January 2021, following online calls for
violence, a mob stormed the US Capitol.
“What happened on January 6 has definitely mainstreamed this
conversation,” “But we should note that even before the capitol
storming, we were already Talking about liability of social media
platforms, when we talked about Myanmar, for instance. "Years earlier,
nationalists in Myanmar had already used Facebook to foment violence
against
the country’s Rohingya minority. “Facebook didn’t even notice that because they didn’t have anyone speaking the local languages and they didn’t have anyone monitoring the situation in Myanmar.” “They have grown even faster than they could think about what kind of responsibility comes with that growth — and that has been one of the problems. ”Facebook has acknowledged mistakes in Myanmar, hired more local language experts and pledged to do better. But increasingly
, governments say that such pledges alone aren’t enough. Some, including Germany, have therefore passed laws that force the platforms to quickly take down incendiary posts or face big fines. And speaking of money — there’s a third reason why Big Tech is under fire: Taxes. For years, critics have said that the companies aren’t paying their fair share of taxes — both when it comes to how much they’re paying and where they’re paying them. “The problem here is that governments, both in the United States and Europe, have given them a lot of space to go to the lowest point of taxes — to use the loopholes to deploy their armies of lawyers and accountants
all over the world to place profits in other parts of the world where they were actually made and to really move the accounting around.” NGOs estimate that in 2020 alone, a group of 20 countries in the Global South missed out on almost 700 million Euro from Facebook and over 765 million Euro from Google’s parent company Alphabet. “Big Technology companies like
Facebook, Google and Amazon will soon be paying more taxes in France…” Some countries have introduced national taxes to make the companies pay at least some taxes where people use their services. But many believe that a global tax is needed. International talks were stalled by the Trump administration. The Biden administration has signaled willingness to come back to the table. Some hope for a deal by this summer. But that’s far from certain. And taxes aside, some people also say the companies have simply become too big. Which brings us to the final issue: competition. And, once again, it helps to go back in time. This man is John D. Rockefeller.
Over a century ago, he was essentially what Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg are today. Rockefeller had built up an empire that controlled over 90 percent of oil in the U.S. This made him the richest man of his time. But people said his success was built on unfair practices. And in 1911, the US Supreme Court ruled to split up his corporation into 34 companies. Fast forward by 110 years and you will hear people say similar things about Big Tech. In late 2020, US Democrats said in a report that every one of the “Big Four” runs a monopoly like “the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons.” Companies, they said, effectively have to sell their products on Amazon’s marketplace because they have no “viable alternative.”
Apple, they added, gets to decide what software people use on their phones — and charges “supra-competitive prices” to developers. Facebook bought up companies like Integral or What Sapp whenever they were about to become serious competitors, according to the lawmakers. And Google has favored its own services in its search engine and advertising business, the report said. The companies reject those claims: Amazon has dismissed them as “interventions in the free market.” Apple says it does not overcharge developers. Facebook argues that all its acquisitions were approved by regulators. And Google says that,
unlike what the report claims, it still does have strong competitors. But this hasn’t stopped U.S. and other governments from launching antitrust cases against the companies. And some are even asking: What if we go back to what was done 110 years ago, and break up Big Tech? Make no mistake: That would be incredibly difficult and messy, and it’s completely unclear if any kind of break-up will happen — but the debate is gathering speed. “I don’t know to what extent it would solve all the problems
we have with big tech.” “In some ways, breaking up a company is a remedy of last resort.” “It’s a threat to our democracy if any single company has so much power. And we already see how much lobbying power they have and how much money they’re spending trying to influence not just politics, but NGOs, research. “Around the world, Big Tech is spending more than ever on lobbying: In Brussels, for example, the Big Four spent at least 15 million Euro in 2020, according to the EU’s lobbying register.
They have their
reasons: The bloc is working on landmark legislation to both curb the
market power of Big Tech and hold companies accountable for
what’s happening on their platforms. And it was against that
backdrop that the leaders of Germany, Finland, Denmark and
Estonia sent their letter in March.
“As Europeans, we aspire to continue asserting our
democratic values and rules in the digital era,” they wrote. And they concluded by calling on
Brussels to “put the weight of the European Commission behind
this joint endeavor.” It was their way of saying: Time
to get tough on Big Tech.