We Need to Talk About Big Data’s Global Takeover
By: Marshall Piotrowski
Tags: International Relations, Politics, Big Data, Technology, Economics

We Need to Talk About Big Data’s Global Takeover

Photo by Roman Koester on Unsplash

I almost exclusively use Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Instagram to stay caught up with the news, and I’m far from alone. The routine usually feels mundane: wake up, scroll, scream, chug coffee, etc. But what does it mean for us and our future when just a few companies are so deeply entwined with our daily lives?

I’m not going to talk here about surveillance, or Zuckerberg, or Bezos, or their greed (well maybe a little), or the mental health dangers of being online too much. These are all dizzyingly scary topics, but what I want to talk about here is how tech giants managed to wedge themselves between the press and the reading public, between public interests and the state, and between producers and consumers.

From right under our noses (literally) these companies — Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Twitter — garner and manipulate an immense amount of global power, and wield it to serve their shareholders’ interests. Comprehensive, multilateral action from the international community is the only way to rein them in before they destroy us.

“The giants raised the barriers to entry and capped success.”

The internet was long esteemed “the great equalizer”. While the internet has increased many people’s access to information — which theoretically should result in more socially-optimal market outcomes and greater equity across the globe — the profit-seeking nature of these firms skews the integrity of the information they distribute, and the process of distribution itself.

Machine learning algorithms on platforms like Facebook, Google, and Youtube are well documented to push viewers towards increasingly radical and polarized content.[1] These algorithms are designed to keep users engaged for as long as possible in order to sell more ads and collect more data, not to feed you sound, factually backed info. The result is an internet that is now a terrible place to challenge your own beliefs or generate productive discourse. We’re all stuck in the algorithm, plummeting down different, strangely specific “recommended” rabbit holes.

Polarization aside, artificial intelligence is often trained on old data sets which arrive pre-filled with problematic power dynamics, stereotypes, and inequalities. These oppressive views and tendencies are baked-in to these algorithms before they even go public, and can reinforce those oppressions in the real world. For example, one finds disturbingly different results when searching “three white teenagers” on Google Images versus searching “three Black teenagers”.[2] The images of white teenagers are usually of them playing sports or games, while the images of Black teenagers are typically all mugshots.

This spells huge trouble for the global public as the “big five” become the world’s largest disseminators of information. The co-option of these distributional services from the press enables a few companies and their racist, sexist, homophobic, ageist, transphobic, polarizing algorithms to become de-facto authorities and gatekeepers of much of the world’s information.

“The U.S. would rather be destroyed by its own giants than allow China’s to become more powerful.”

Big Tech also snuck into our political institutions. David Dayden of The Intercept wrote a revealing piece documenting just how deep the connection between the state and the tech giants runs. He notes that Google alone spent $16.7 million on lobbying in 2015 and offered free services to government agencies, training to campaigns, policy suggestions, and visited the White House on average at least once a week for nearly the entire Obama presidency.[3]

Dayden also illustrates how a fast-turning revolving door moved 252 people between the upper echelons of Big Tech and Washington during the Obama years, creating a system in which tech professionals are often asked to make regulations on themselves.[4]

The tech industry has profoundly changed in the United States over the past two decades. The giants raised the barriers to entry and capped success. The average tech startup now hopes to be bought by a giant rather than hoping to become one someday. Additionally, any new app must run through at least one of these companies, be it in the Apple App Store, Google Play, the Amazon App store, or Facebook apps.

This is just one example of how giants manage to profit from and be involved with any and all new competition or progress in the tech industry. They are in fact inhibiting innovation, not catalyzing it.

Much of the world’s commerce also happens across these platforms. Amazon may be the biggest culprit here, already capturing a huge amount of online commerce before COVID-19 and only expanding its share of the market through the shutdowns. However, Google and Facebook have also become marketplaces in themselves, and a middle-man between consumers and other marketplaces.

Like most of us, when I want to buy a product online, I almost always google it first, which allows them to sell me ads from Amazon and other retailers. It also lets them collect more data about my shopping habits in order to send me ever-more targeted ads. Or, alternatively, the product finds me first through targeted ads.

Businesses of all sorts now feel pressured to maintain an engaging social media presence, chase the narrative of “unlocking the potential of the internet”, and conduct advertising through these platforms. Or you might be using Google or Microsoft’s browser even if you’re not using their search engines.

This masterful positioning by these firms, between the press and the reading public, between the people and our governments, and between producers and consumers has rendered them as powerful as many of the world’s states.

Profit-driven corporations should never possess such important roles in our political and economic institutions: their interests and the interests of the public simply do not line up. They will sell us, our social cohesion, and our democratic processes out for a profit every single time. They already have.

The U.S. clearly won’t save us.

Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash

Outdated and inapplicable antitrust laws gravely hinder the ability of the U.S. to take action against these firms. Many recall the trust-busting days of the early 20th Century, and especially the breakup of Standard Oil & Co. But antitrust regulation in the United States usually only recognizes a breakup as warranted if the trust raises prices for consumers.

On the contrary, these firms abuse market power in ways not accounted for by the U.S. legal structure. For example, pick any of the dozens of times Amazon has entered a new industry and eliminated their competitors by operating at a loss and drastically undercutting prices, a move only made possible through their massive revenue streams and undying support from their investors.

Beyond the revolving door and the insufficient legal structure, the U.S. also tends to prop-up these tech firms as pawns in mercantilist battles with China, competing against Chinese giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. The U.S. would rather be destroyed by its own giants than allow China’s to become more powerful.

Europe, refreshingly, has at least made some small steps against big tech. In 2017, the E.U. fined Google $2.7 billion for anti-competitive practices[5], and fined them in 2019 again for $1.7 billion.[6] There are more examples, but besides showing that action can be taken, these cases more so display the shortcomings of reining them in on regional scales, as penalties in Europe only change Google’s behaviors in Europe.

These firms pose global threats which must be solved on the same international scale. The international community needs to quickly come together, make the not-so-tough decision to do something about this, and break them up.