Big Tech and The American Machine

Americans love their Constitution. Its longevity and liberal emphases have given it an untouchable status in American politics. In no other country is so much political debate dedicated to the founding document. Even in Britain, with the debate regarding Brexit, the word "unconstitutional" has been the reserve of academics and judges. One of the aspects of the US Constitution praised most often is the separation of powers between the three branches of American government - legislative, executive and judicial. By ensuring that various elected bodies constantly check and evaluate each other, it is believed that the American people are protected against tyranny.

Because of the checks and balances of the Constitution, many Americans will be surprised to learn where the real seat of power in their nation lies. It is not in the Capitol building, nor in the White House, nor in the Supreme Court: the real heart of American power is in Silicon Valley, in the hands of the ever-dominant technology industry. While there are numerous unelected organisations that wield some level of influence on American society (the mainstream media, political NGOs and federal agencies like the FBI), I believe that the world's largest technology companies, Big Tech, exercise an unprecedented and undue level of power over American society. By demonstrating that Big Tech has obtained its power unethically and is using said power unfairly, it will be evident why anti-monopoly legislation should be applied to Big Tech.

It is becoming increasingly more difficult to have a successful career in traditional markets without also having an internet presence. Every industry from collegiate sports to investment banking favours those who have submitted to communicating via a handful of platforms. However, unlike most markets, it is self-defeating to attempt to start an alternative. If one supermarket chain has the largest market share, an individual doesn't get a poorer supermarket experience simply because he chooses to go to a less popular chain. However, social media relies on having large numbers of people to communicate with; it is fine to start an alternative to Twitter, but as long as Twitter has a substantially larger user base, your platform exists as an empty room to shout into. In its short lifetime, platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn have established themselves as status quo communication methods. Knowing this, they act accordingly to further certain messages, and to silence others. Twitter's censorship has been entirely directed towards the Right: Candace Owens was temporarily banned for anti-lockdown posts; Ben Garrison was banned for suggesting that Washington was controlled by a secret cabal; and now Donald J. Trump, the outgoing President, has been banned permanently for "inciting" the attack on the Capitol. When confronted over their obviously biased censorship, the rhetort "private companies should be able to act as they please" is often employed. But when large technology corporations have benefited from unfair legal protections and government subsidies, how can we view them as "private"?

Big Tech now has more power than the American government, and the American government is to blame. Since 1997, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft have received more than 5 billion US dollars in federal, state and local subsidies throughout the United States. This alone qualifies as a blatantly unfair practice, but financial subsidies have played a minor role in how Big Tech has grown to its current value and power levels. In 1996, the United States Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, an act originally intended to regulate pornography and obscenity online. However, the law also concluded the now infamous Section 230, a provision that has been fought by politicians such as President Trump and Senator Hawley of Missouri. Section 230 reads:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Section 230 protects social media companies like Twitter from being held accountable for content posted on their websites, essentially making them platforms. The purpose of the provision was to discourage social media platforms from hawking over the posts made by their users. Section 230 was supposed to create an internet free of censorship. However, while not being treated as publishers when it comes to the sharing of illegal content, social media companies like Twitter often take the liberty of censoring individuals as though they were the publisher. Although companies like Twitter have enjoyed the legal protection of Section 230 for over a decade, the desired result has not been achieved.

The feud over Trump's suspension of Twitter is not the sum of the problem. Over the past thirty years, Big Tech has become more powerful than any other American industry. Unfortunately, it took Big Tech censoring the President for many to realise that the federal government has been usurped; and given the amount of lobbying that Big Tech does, it will not be easy to return to the old regime.

ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG; MARK LENNIHAN/AP PHOTO
America's Diarchs