Facebook, Google, the Internet, and Us!
Internet Regulation in 2020: Really?
If someone wants to regulate the internet now, it’s 20 years too late. I assume that the internet is a good story for the free economy. Yet without rivalry, you can’t get into the business. And web competition over the last half-century has been made possible through a long line of pro-competitive government actions (Lee, 2020).
Those who are thoughtfully opposed to government intervention on the internet market emphasize that the internet access market has worked quite well in the last two decades. However, internet credit goes in part to politicians who first created the competitive internet market. The power of competitive markets cannot be commended without denigrating the type of regulation that made such competition possible. The damage has been done! Behavior on the internet can be regulated. The Internet itself cannot be.
It is like our parents trying to undo the bad decisions that have already shaped our lives.
BigTech makes money out of our data: But Hey! We gave it to them!
In previous years, the usage of online personal knowledge has been contentious. Last year, the Cambridge Analytics Facebook scandal swept across the globe and warned internet companies. Most documents have been gathered and used without warnings. Online Platforms started online to send clear waivers demonstrating the use and purposes of data collection before the EU published the GDPR to regulate that companies have to provide agreements before obtaining permission to collect user privacy data.
Next, users engage in viewing personal details as an exchange, to profit from websites or devices. While the management of internet data has become strict, the protection of the web must be compromised by consumers. On the other hand, internet companies such as Google and Facebook can not avoid gathering customer data as the search and networking systems are focused on large-scale data analytics. Moreover, Google and Facebook are not competitively able to provide better customer services without the provision of up-to-date and sufficient information. They need the data, but selling it for research or other reasons is unfair.
From Tech to Media Companies
They collect a user’s data about the user and provide them with data that they are most likely to engage with to get them glued to their screens, and also tell us to look at the scenery around us more. Facebook’s feed is on the front page of the newspaper, Breaking news is discovered from Google, and entertainment from Twitter. They argue that they are not media companies as they don’t employ and use journalists, but this does not change the fact that people have changed the way they read and absorb information (Kovach, 2020).
Also, these so-called Tech companies compete for the neck to neck with media companies for ad revenue. Finally, competition between online platforms and traditional media providers for advertising revenues implies their operations within the same business sector. Thus, they are new-age Media companies.
Have they become too Powerful?
I do not believe it is so often that these corporations are too dominant that exploitation is so personal to all of us. We are building forums to welcome our lives at the same moment in history that offer the idea of public interest to the winds and to let capital take them all. Everything you encounter in the day is gradually getting currency, and the desire to make money is in some form behind it. We have empowered them with excess usage.
We don’t want to risk everything the umbilicus of the universe, so we don’t know how to avoid scammers and trolls, and we just deal with it and see what we see every day get a little worse.
So, Should the government regulate Social Media?
Social media is a platform, not a publisher. They have a means for the creation and distribution of knowledge for vast numbers of citizens. This is available to manufacturers and customers alike. The posts on a website were controlled by social network executives, but not all. There will be an ex-post oversight. Ex-ante enforcement is discouraged by the amount and desires of consumers with immediate release. Regardless of the freedom to free expression to their consumers, social media will receive policy support. First amendment protections for the shareholders of the businesses involved are beyond governments seeking a voice to talk. Editors can choose what is to appear on their platform; after all, not everything sent to the platform will remain. In addition to the contents being removed, platform managers also place content on it, which affects the chances of users seeing it. These are analogous to the editorial decisions of the author and will be covered under the First Amendment (Samples, 2020).
