Discussing the weather while people are dying
The European Union was the first group of countries to make tech companies understand they cannot do whatever they want. The GDPR is not the salvation of the universe, but at last, we have some red line showing that not everyone can sell your data in awful ways and get away with it based on armies of lawyers and PR.
The EU is not in a state of paralysis. Still, the development of digital regulation is so slow that whole industries manage to take advantage of gaps and loopholes for years before seeing some warning, and more often than not, slight ones.
For example, the Digital Services Act is being rediscussed for ages. The battle to determine if tech platforms are media companies or not is a struggle lasting a decade. Still, the MEPs’ limited knowledge of the matter allows companies to pretend indefinitely.
In a nutshell, the digital monopolists want to divert the responsibility of monitoring content to pick up hate speech, bullying and invitations to invade lawmaking houses and lynch opposition politicians. They argue, usually mentioning the First Amendment in the US or the Right to Free Speech in the EU, that it’s not their role to judge, and they defend the freedoms that the law ensures for citizens.
Saying that the corporation lawyers trying to safeguard freedom of speech is an embarrassing excuse. The simple fact of bringing it on should shame everyone involved. Still, politics is the art of compromise, and it’s far easier for us to say that here than on a Parliament session that is obnoxiously ruled by statutes not updated since Napoleon governed half of central Europe. Whole sessions go on discussing something that is more than clear: that media companies are no longer the ones who produce content only.
The new information technologies created by tech companies make them at the core of the problem because none other than them can do something. The social media giants plus Google and a few others could open their data oceans for other institutions to help with the task, but this would reveal the business secrets that generate more money per year than hundreds of countries.
What was already bad is getting worse. According to the EU Disinfolab, the debate over the Digital Services Act has amendments that would prevent the platforms completely from removing content to the extent that not even warnings about the worst forgeries would be possible. It is not sure that this insanity could become law, but the simple fact of having such aberration on the agenda shows no synchrony between legislators and real life.
To solve the information crisis, legislators should put less under their belts and empower society to take action, be it through NGO’s, researchers or private companies. When Facebook shut down the access of its political ads data for researchers a few weeks ago, it would have been an excellent opportunity to take some action.
Facebook is not an evil company. It is just a too powerful one, but the difference between “evil” and “too powerful” becomes so blurred that you can’t distinguish one from another. Lawmakers should create simple, understandable rules allowing society to organise itself to react when necessary. The relentless increase of Facebook (and other digital behemoths) market cap makes anyone understand that the market sees the Palo Alto-based empire as virtually exempt from the law, able to dictate the rules, and, if there is a fine (even a big one), it makes no difference. The technology giants became so big that, in fact, they are beyond the law.
The US would be much better positioned to put brakes on the digital giants because that’s where their headquarters are. However, the irreversible polarisation reached by the political realm, plus the power coming from lobbies to politicians needing to finance their next election round, ensure that no effective regulation will be ever agreed upon. That’s why the European Union must take action. Even with wannabe dictators among its ranks, Brussels and Strasbourg are the fittest available to the task.
Photo by Genaro Servín from Pexels
