As a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol last month, they were cheered on by a crowd of supporters gathered in front of the Minnesota Capitol that directed threats at Gov. Tim Walz. These events were the culmination of conspiracy run amok and a poisoned public square. As policymakers both here and in D.C. launch efforts to hold fellow elected officials accountable for the despicable actions of that day, it has overshadowed the bigger threat to democracy, Big Tech.
Companies like Facebook and Google (which owns YouTube) have built massive surveillance structures that amplify hate, division and conspiracy for profit. This content is not a defect that an internal team of fact-checkers can fix, because it is core to Big Tech’s business model. Relying on these companies to ban users only strengthens their outsized power to shape our discourse. While tech platforms pretend to be neutral arbiters, simply providing a platform to share content, what you see on your screen is by design.
For example, YouTube recommended videos from Alex Jones — the right-wing conspiracy theorist behind InfoWars — to viewers more than 15 billion times, significantly more than the combined traffic of leading media outlets. A recent study by Accountable Tech demonstrates how the company’s algorithms send users down rabbit holes of ever more extreme content. The companies might not have created conspiracy and hyperbole, but they are aggressively pushing it to billions of users worldwide and cashing in on our growing hatred for one another.
Built through anti-competitive conduct
Amplifying divisive content increases user engagement and allows Facebook and Google to harvest more data from you, which they use to draw in advertisers. While one could question the effectiveness of targeted advertising, advertisers are not, as digital advertising has supplanted print and television. Facebook and Google account for 70% of digital ad revenue and in recent years they have captured nearly all new digital ad dollars. These massive advertising empires were not built through incredible innovations, but anti-competitive conduct.
According to the American Economic Liberties Project, Facebook has acquired 86 companies since 2005 (a year after it launched) while Google has gobbled up 255 companies since 2001. Facebook’s acquisitions have been about entrenching its position as the only social media game in town, choosing to purchase potential rivals like Instagram and WhatsApp instead of competing. Google, meanwhile, has taken control over nearly every stage of digital advertising outside of Facebook. The company earns billions from its domination of search, thanks in part to anti-competitive agreements that set Google as the default search engine. Advertising on YouTube requires usage of other Google ad products and the Google Display Network controls access to display ads on more than 2 million websites, videos and apps.
[image_caption]Justin Stofferahn[/image_caption]
What can be done?
The good news is we can do something about this. Existing antitrust law can be used to curb the immense power Big Tech has amassed and end their anti-competitive conduct. The Federal Trade Commission has launched an antitrust suit against Facebook as has a massive coalition of state attorneys general. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has inherited an antitrust investigation against Google while several states are also pursuing antitrust charges against the company. Moving forward, Congress could ban targeted advertising and curtail Big Tech’s section 230 immunity.
But Minnesota lawmakers also have plenty of power at their disposal. California has taken innovative steps to protect privacy and give people more control over their data, and Florida has proposed joining the mix. North Dakota recently introduced legislation that would end Big Tech’s grip on app developers, and Maryland just passed a tax on digital advertising. Now would also be a good time to end Minnesota’s tax giveaways to data centers.
But for any of this to become a reality, Minnesotans must reacquaint themselves with our tradition of fighting monopoly power. We were the birthplace of the Antimonopoly Party in 1873 and today we have a U.S. senator in Amy Klobuchar who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Competition Policy along with an attorney general in Keith Ellison who helped launch the Congressional Antitrust Caucus. Our state can lead a renewed anti-monopoly movement that helps heal our wounded democracy, but we must demand it from policymakers first.
Justin Stofferahn lives in White Bear Township and is a public affairs professional who has worked on a variety of tax and economic development issues. He was a candidate for the Minnesota State Senate in 2020 and can be reached at http://www.justinstofferahn.com.
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Facebook has done severe damage to our relationships near and far.
Google, on the other hand, has provided many services that actually enhance communication and tools for the public good.
Am I in the minority being one who sees it this way?
Hmm, quite a bit to unpack here. While it’s easy to agree with the overall thrust here, as tech firms don’t tend to act in ways that accrue much sympathy, there are some holes here.
“Companies like Facebook and Google (which owns YouTube) have built massive surveillance structures that amplify hate, division and conspiracy for profit”
It’s undeniable that there is an overwhelming amount of
terrible content out there. But it’s also undeniable that there’s a wonderful amount of great content too, that wouldn’t exist but for the platform. Profit is made from both. I can get behind the idea that algorithms build like upon like and can influence the pull a certain bit of content creates, but how does one suggest that the good content be spared from being thrown out with the bad? Mr. Stofferahn suggests that the companies are not to be trusted to curate the content themselves, so what is the answer? Bringing in the the advertising piece, it seems the concept of social media in general is what’s under scrutiny, as I fail to see any other means of monetizing the “good” content, unless one wishes to return to the subscription model of gatekeeping that proscribed content creation prior to the rise of social media itself. Facebook, Google and the all the others aren’t providing their platforms out of the goodness of their hearts obviously, so it’ll have to be one or the other. If that’s the case, how is it not just shifting control from one master to another? I don’t see a great difference between Facebook, Google, and Apple or Comcast, Turner, AT&T, Sinclair Media, IHeart, Glen Taylor or whatever hedge fund owns the PiPress at the moment deciding what content I see or hear. What IS different, is that with latter names I can be assured that I’ll never see content that might be controversial, or that might not be geared toward making the most profit possible.
While using divisive and extreme content to strengthen their monopoly business models, Facebook and Google have simultaneously destroyed one of the most powerful checks on that destructive content: local newspapers
I just can’t agree here. Maybe the there’s a different definition of “local newspaper” but as I look at this weeks edition of the “Quad Community Press”, I struggle to see what I’m supposed to be romanticizing. Is it the four or five, week old wire service stories I could have read online a week ago? The rehash of the continuing Fire department drama that has been happening for years? The obvious conservative bias of the editorial board, oops I mean editor? I certainly don’t miss the 4 pages of paid “letters to the editor” otherwise known as campaign lit that cluttered the pages for months before the election. The hometown paper in the little burg in Wisconsin was roughly the same, long before the rise of Big Tech, though they tended specialize in the “handing a check” photo more than news. It’s not like the String and PiPress are a whole lot better, newspapers are just a dying brand, the rise of the internet itself sealed that deal, the pandora’s box of instantaneous information will never be closed, and waiting for news will never again be the norm. The paywall model will have to be the way forward, as unappealing as it may be, but taking away the ability to advertise from others won’t suddenly make advertising with the newspapers any more appealing.
Moving forward, Congress could ban targeted advertising and curtail Big Tech’s section 230 immunity.
Horrible ideas. The small business I work for has used targeting advertising on Google to increase our revenue 5 fold. We went from 5 employees to 10 in 2 years, for 1/2, the cost of traditional print advertising. Why should we lose that opportunity? As for sec 230, if there is no longer a platform for controversial speech (the end result of such an action), the filth of the right will be gone it’s true, but where will the voices of the left be heard? I guarantee you it won’t be on the latter half of that list I posted above.
Tough one to chew on, think of all the scribes that went out of business when the printing press came about? Or how about the pony express guys when USPS came about, and/or Ma Bell came about? The a-holes will get their message out one way or the other, count on it, Parlor opened up in their own forum. Are the big guys too big? Well maybe you need look no further than China & Russia, these folks control it all, is the preference for Uncle Sam (like under T****) to tell us what is fake news? The global competition is extreme, little guys get eaten up most times willingly. Now is it worth it to do some real analysis on the business, probably, but as other folks have said, where would we be now without these folks? Have they done more harm than good, I think not, it isn’t google or face book etc. that is cultivating the a-holes.
I agree with the message here: big tech must be broken up. But the messenger did not clearly describe the reasons why antitrust remedies, including dissolution or restructuring, are necessary and appropriate. There’s only one sentence that only alludes to the problem:
“Newspapers were adjusting to the online landscape as advertising revenue for outlets hit a high of $49.2 billion in 2005, before taking a nosedive and falling to just $14.2 billion in 2018 as the tech giants rose to power.”
What we as Google and Facebook users perceive as “free” is really not at all. It’s being paid for by advertising funds that used to go to print media newspapers in ads under the traditional model where the newspaper was funded 50% by subscriptions and 50% by advertisers more or less. These advertising costs are invisible to users but are being paid by marketers, including those selling political lies, misinformation and disinformation to Facebook and Google. The tools available allow these ads to be targeted to us as individuals based on the private data these information tech. giants have.
The commenters above wonder what’s the big deal because they don’t miss seeing articles a week old on “outdated” print media. That’s not the problem. It’s what will not be seen in terms of more comprehensive and in depth as well as investigative reporting. Would Google or Facebook have investigated and reported on the Catholic Church’s coverup of sex abuse of children by clergy like the Boston Globe did in 2002? In case you hadn’t noticed, most of the real stories today come from just a few large print media, like the Washington Post and the New York Times. The Washington Post is owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. That’s another “platform” that needs to be broken up. Amazon/Bezos now owns Barnes and Noble and Thrift Books by the way. Amazon’s control over “independent contractor” booksellers is as predatory and monopolistic as he/it is toward independent booksellers.
The commenters above wonder what’s the big deal because they don’t miss seeing articles a week old on “outdated” print media. That’s not the problem. It’s what will not be seen in terms of more comprehensive and in depth as well as investigative reporting. Would Google or Facebook have investigated and reported on the Catholic Church’s coverup of sex abuse of children by clergy like the Boston Globe did in 2002.
You misunderstand my point. It’s not that I don’t value the sort of investigative reporting that you mention, it’s that it’s not Google and Facebook that killed print media. Take them both away tomorrow, there will still be no one running ads in physical papers that nobody reads, it’s a terrible investment. That’s simply a result of the the pace of information, the internet itself. Does it degrade the quality of the information being transmitted, yep probably, but good luck getting three generations now, brought up in a world where whatever knowledge one seeks is a click away, to accept that information must be doled out at the whim and pace of a newsroom of journalists, and the corporate masters that employ them. Journalism will need to adapt, what form that ultimately takes is malleable, but to simply suggest that we must revert to “how it’s always been” is simply a retreat from reality. I expect that future will most likely be subscription based, on the whole, for better or worse, kinda the only result available given the generalized distaste for advertising of any sort that’s taken root in the past decade or so. Unfortunately that sort of model will favor those with pockets deep enough to get such ventures off the ground in the “building a subscriber base” phase.
These advertising costs are invisible to users but are being paid by marketers, including those selling political lies, misinformation and disinformation to Facebook and Google. The tools available allow these ads to be targeted to us as individuals based on the private data these information tech. giants have.
Some of those costs are also paid by small businesses, to increase their customer base too, as I mentioned. I get it, no one likes ads, but how exactly would you suggest your average business go about marketing itself, when you’ve decided that largest platforms for exposure are now off limits? You do understand the outsize role these platforms provide for those who previously found their entrepreneurial aspirations hamstrung by the high market entry costs for advertising, right? To suggest that this should be thrown out the window, because political malefactors ALSO utilize the platform, seems a bit much. What would be your alternative suggestion for those businesses affected? It’s not like there’s yellow pages anymore, and when’s the last time you looked at a junk mail and before tossing it in the recycling bin? That’s the sort of media these platforms replaced for small business.