At last, the US is standing up to Zuckerberg. Now it’s our turn to grow a spine

Our Government promised to “take back control”. There can be no better place to start than with the internet
James Ball
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James Ball11 December 2020
WEST END FINAL

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Right at the end of a year when it seemed like nothing — not even a pandemic — could unite America, finally something has:  Facebook. The Federal Trade Commission and the attorneys general of 46 states, Republican and Democrat alike, have launched what is surely the biggest anti-trust case of the 21st century so far. It is nothing less than a bid to break up Facebook, separating it from WhatsApp and Instagram.

Usually a lawsuit like this would seem like an overreaction, or even draconian. In the case of Facebook, we might question whether even this kind of radical action is anywhere near enough. Every day, around one in four people on the planet use one of Facebook’s services. It controls the world’s largest social network and one of the world’s largest messaging services.  

Facebook uses this unprecedented reach to sell an expected $80 billion of adverts this year, and will keep around a third of this as profit: $50,000 of pure profit for every minute of 2020, in a year when almost every other company has struggled desperately to stay afloat.

Those profits come at a cost, paid by everyone except Facebook. The social network is a hotbed of dangerous misinformation, whether risking electoral interference, divides in society, or spreading dangerous untruths about coronavirus or the new vaccines on the verge of helping us to tackle it.

The price is also paid by victims of abuse on Facebook or Instagram, people who are relentlessly trolled, sometimes to the point of self-harm or suicide. It is paid by the victims of those radicalised by Facebook and other social media, some of whom then go on to broadcast, live and on Facebook, the killings they commit. The harms and the tolls go on and on. This could sound like a case for shutting down Facebook — but that wouldn’t be the answer. Something else would take its place, and people will abuse or misinform each other wherever it is possible. What is needed is to make sure companies pay the social costs of their businesses — instead of offloading the costs to us, while they make billions.

That can’t just mean Facebook. All five of the world’s biggest public companies are tech firms — Facebook, Alphabet (better known as Google), Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft — and all of them wield huge, perhaps monopolistic, power. All of them exert costs on society and make excessive profits.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
AP

The lawsuit is a sign that America — the usually pro-business home of all five of these companies — recognises tackling big tech is vital. Breaking up Facebook would only be a start — it could never be enough on its own, especially as it would leave three multi-billion dollar companies each with a billion daily users. Tackling big tech would also mean putting tech giants on the same tax basis as the small businesses — often on the high street — that they compete with. It might mean sharing the proceeds of the cash generated from our personal data with us, the users. And it must mean doing more to handle the harms done by these companies’ business models.

The UK could lead on this — but instead, so far, our ministers are hopelessly behind the times. Minutes of a 2018 meeting between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Matt Hancock, then culture secretary, were obtained this week after a two-year freedom of information battle by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The minutes show Hancock trying to calm Zuckerberg and reassure him that the UK was not “anti-tech”. Hancock wanted “increased dialogue” with Zuckerberg, the minutes state, so he can show he has “support from Facebook at the highest level”. As other countries get ready to tackle big tech, the UK seems determined to say we don’t have the stomach for a fight.

This year has shown us the stakes: for many of us, our lives have moved online. The internet has become the gateway to the outside world, to our entertainment, our workplaces, our friends and our families. But it is dominated by big tech gatekeepers.

We need a say over these spaces, and a stake — not to shut down big tech, but to make it work in all of our interests. The US lawsuit is a great statement of intent that times are changing. The UK should follow that signal. We are governed by politicians who came to power promising to “take back control”. There can be no better place to start than with the internet.

James Ball is global editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and author of The System: Who Owns The Internet And How It Owns Us

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