Online Powers in the Age of Growing Tech: Why Time is Nigh For Regulation

Mengnan Yu
Nov 3 · 4 min read

Google and Facebook have become household names across the globe, commanding a following that is beyond any known cult. From marketing, advertising, sales, education, religion, politics and even education, these tech giants are influencing the most important decisions, and massively. As of April 2019, Google commands a whooping 88.47 percent of the search engine market. Currently Google’s revenue stream is from a myriad of sources including mail, enterprise products, mobile devices among other ventures. There is no doubt that Google has changed lots of live across the world, especially improving productivity and collaboration in the manner we work. By December 2018, Gmail (Google’s dominant mail service) powered more than 900 million free accounts globally. By September 2019, Google’s web browser, Chrome which is also a free service had a 65 per cent market share with over 600 million users. These figures not only highlight that Google is a force to reckon with but also hint on how Google touches lives by providing essential free services to many across the world.

Facebook, on the other hand, has demystified the manner in which individuals communicate through text and audio-visual in the digital age. By December 2018, Facebook had 1.9 billion followers, making it the biggest country today in the world, if a hypothetical case was to be considered. With a revenue grossing over 55 billion dollars, Facebook could be among the best performing economies of our time, if it were a country. While individuals open and close accounts freely, the biggest chunk of Facebook’s revenue comes from a digital advertising model. Businesses and brands pay advertising fee to the company which then connects them to ideal buyers based on available user data. Through the opportunity that Facebook offers, some companies have launched to become million-dollar brands without physical brick-and-mortar stores. Besides, millions of individuals have started agencies to offer Facebook Advertising and Marketing services. Apart from the millions of jobs, the platform has enabled ubiquitous and seamless connection between individuals and their families and friends across the globe.

The Woes

Despite their benefits, Google, Facebook and other tech giants have been causing jitters from the political divide to the business frontier. The fact that billions of individuals trust these two brands means they can use their power to influence major decisions, such as the infamous influence of the 2016 USA elections by Cambridge Analytica. The key currency that Google and Facebook possess; user’s private data, can be used to cause the third world war. While both companies have always been on the forefront of reciting their commitment to the privacy of user data and impartiality, it is now becoming a daily rhetoric. In 2016, Facebook was caught off guard when Cambridge Analytica accessed data of 87 million users. In 2018, an data breach that occurred in the same company exposed information of more than 50 million global users. In 2019, Facebook has been on the spot again over allegations that data belonging to more than 540 million users was exposed online on the Amazon cloud service. On its part, Google has also had a fair share of controversies. Since they dominate the search, they have been accused of tweaking search results to favor their own interests. For instance, in the 2016 election, Google was seen as leaning towards the election of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. As a result, the Google search engine showcased a lot of misdoings by Trump while censoring the scandals that surrounded Clinton. Besides, Google is also accused of favoring their own merchandise on search engine results pages while literally “burying” those of their competitors.

Regulation is Inevitable and non-negotiable

Credible sources of data shows that Facebook has been mining user’s data without their knowledge nor consent. Facebook allegedly harvests emails of the users when they open their accounts and also snoops into individual’s daily life through Facebook Messenger app. The resultant effect is that the company uses this data to structure their Facebook advertising program to better target individuals with products they may desire. Such an unethical manner of maximizing the company’s profits needs regulation, and it’s now or never. On the other hand, Google is currently waging an online competition war by favoring products and services affiliated to the brand on their search engine. Without proper regulation, Google could crush competitors by the flash of a day. With their growing capabilities in algorithmic and machine learning technologies, the world should not take any chances.

The fact that fingers are already pointed at Google and Facebook for interfering with democratic political processes only emphasizes why and how these brands could be used as tools of war. If the two companies were to gang up against a certain candidate by censoring the individual’s content on the two platforms, there is a high likelihood such individuals are doomed to failure. In a similar fashion, if the two platforms design their algorithms in a manner that discriminates certain businesses, races, or entire nations, dire consequences would arise. The two giants have the power to decide what to show the world since they are already increasing their stakes in the news media sector. Likewise, they are now custodians to not-so-private-data belonging to billions of private global citizens. Apparently, only these giants can prove whether they are prioritizing the privacy of such data or otherwise. Regulation is urgently needed to ensure that these ticking time bombs do not explode when it is too late. Sadly, majority of those expected to come up with regulations understand little about how Google and Facebook algorithms work. Nevertheless, world governments and agencies must take the issue of regulating the power in the hands of these tech giants who have potential to either decimate the entire world or build it positively. Of these options, regulation should be a tool of compelling the tech giants achieve the latter.

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Grad student at NYU. Cat and dog lover.

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