Monthly Archives: June 2022

Now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are under pressure to hold a vote this summer on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, S. 2992 (117) a bill that would prevent tech companies from using their gatekeeper power to disadvantage competitors.

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) speaks as the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee holds a markup hearing to craft the Democrats' Build Back Better Act at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021.|J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

And the tech industry has DelBene in their corner, leading opposition in the House.

We love Representative DelBene, said Rob Atkinson, founder and president of the tech-funded think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. (DelBene is an honorary co-chair of the think tank.) Atkinson said DelBene is a key proponent of policies that favor innovation.

Behind her back, some of DelBenes congressional colleagues, both moderates and progressives, gripe that she is an apologist for large tech companies that are some of her most important donors.

But DelBene who has also condemned antitrust efforts in Europe against tech companies and spent years pushing privacy legislation backed by industry argues she is an even-handed lawmaker with a special understanding of the tech industry from her 12 years as an executive at Microsoft, and startups before that.

This is something I have a lot of understanding on and want to make sure we have strong, durable policy for the long term, Delbene said in an interview. I think thats important on privacy and that is important on antitrust.

Asked about her critics, DelBene said: Its unfortunate when, instead of engaging, people question folks integrity.

DelBene denies that she follows the lead of the biggest tech companies. She was one of the first lawmakers to introduce legislation that would protect online privacy and supports an increase in funding for the countrys major antitrust enforcers, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department antitrust division.

And, DelBenes office pointed out, shes recently pushed for privacy-related sections that industry does not support, referring to provisions of a bill currently in the House Energy and Commerce committee that would require companies that are large data holders to conduct compliance audits and provide the results to the FTC.

DelBene, who has a serious demeanor and the professionalism of a former corporate executive, is known on Capitol Hill as friendly but persistent. She has a habit of lecturing her colleagues on how certain parts of the tech industry, such as e-commerce and online advertising, operate.

Nick Martin, DelBenes spokesperson, said the congresswoman isnt opposed to antitrust reform in general, but she has specific concerns about the multiple antitrust bills under consideration right now, which she has agitated against since they passed out of the House Judiciary Committee last year.

That includes the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which Schumer has pledged to put on the floor as soon as this summer. If it moves through the upper chamber, the companion bill in the House is likely to quickly follow.

In interviews, half a dozen lobbyists for big tech companies said they see DelBene, with her key position of power in the House, as the tech industrys most effective champion on Capitol Hill.

She is playing a key leadership role in the House, elevating the unintended consequences of antitrust reform to small businesses, to our national security, to privacy and the cyber protections that the targeted companies provide both at home and abroad to consumers, said Carl Holshouser, senior vice president for operations and strategic initiatives at TechNet, a trade group that represents large tech companies including Google, Facebooks parent company Meta, Amazon and others.

DelBene has particularly rubbed several of her fellow New Democrats the wrong way with her advocacy. When she spearheaded a letter last year calling to delay the committee markup of the House Judiciary antitrust bills, a number of the New Democrats 98 members expressed frustration and claimed it did not speak for the whole caucus.

Since then, DelBene has made personal appeals to several lawmakers who are considering supporting the antitrust legislation, at various points approaching lawmakers on the House floor during votes to try to convince them not to support the bills, according to two aides familiar with the interactions. The aides were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

DelBene said she and others have continued to express concerns about the bills. Many members of the California delegation have raised their own qualms with the legislation targeting their home state companies. And beyond them, DelBene noted that a group of Senate Democrats argued in a recent letter that the legislation could affect the platforms ability to take down hate speech and misinformation. The co-sponsors of the bills, including House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee chair David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), have said those allegations are untrue.

During a private meeting earlier this year with Cicilline, DelBene, who has many Amazon employees in her district, was one of only two members of the New Democrats to raise concerns about the bills narrow focus on a few select companies, said a House aide familiar with the call, who was granted anonymity to speak about a private conversation. Only 12 members of the centrist New Democrats attended the call, along with an assortment of staffers.

DelBene has not been shy in her resistance to regulating the tech platforms and creating more competition in the ways that the House antitrust subcommittee is intending to do, said Sarah Miller, executive director of the anti-monopoly think tank American Economic Liberties Project.

Staffers with the House Judiciary Committee who are advocating for the legislation have hit back by encouraging members of the New Democrats to sign onto the bills as co-sponsors. Ten members of the caucus have signed onto one of the antitrust bills in recent months, according to the most recent list of cosponsors.

The top line is, DelBene has said she has spoken for a coalition of moderate Democrats with one voice, as anti-tech regulation, said one of the congressional aides, who works for a member of the New Democrats. But she is not speaking for all New Dems. Thats obvious by the co-sponsorship of the bills.

DelBenes rejection of the antitrust legislation does differ from that of Microsoft, her former employer which has headquarters in her district. (She was a corporate vice president for Microsofts mobile communications business for several years. Before that, she worked on marketing and product development including on Windows and Internet Explorer.)

Microsoft, which faced years of antitrust-related lawsuits, has lobbied in favor of the antitrust bills, claiming that the tech industry should be regulated.

This July 3, 2014 file photo shows Microsoft Corp. signage outside the Microsoft Visitor Center in Redmond, Wash.|Ted S. Warren/AP Photo

Adam Kovacevich, a former Google lobbyist who now heads the Chamber of Progress, a trade association funded by companies including Google and Meta, said DelBene is a moderate pragmatist focused on representing the views of her pro-tech constituents.

Many of DelBenes detractors point to her financial backers as proof that she is excessively aligned with the tech industry. DelBenes individual donations list reads as a whos who of the tech industrys Washington influence machine. She has received $144,534 from tech executives and lawyers, including Amazons top lobbyist Brian Huseman, Googles chief legal officer Kent Walker, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. (DelBene is one of a handful of lawmakers that Nadella has donated to, including California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and Washington Democratic Rep. Adam Smith).

She has also received around $129,500 from Google, Amazon, Facebook, and tech trade groups Technet and the Consumer Technology Association since she came to Congress a sum much larger than lawmakers overseeing tech-heavy districts like California Democrats Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.). Still, thats much less than Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who has received more than $270,000 from the big tech companies PACs. Lofgren is one of the other major lawmakers speaking out against the antitrust bills in the House.

DelBene said her campaign contributions do not influence her policy decisions. People support me because they believe in me and the job that Im doing, she said.

DelBene argues the tech issue Congress should be focusing on is data privacy rather than antitrust. Its an argument that the tech industry has turned to as well. While the largest players in the tech industry can likely handle the barrage of new costs and regulations that privacy regulation would create, overhauling antitrust laws could mean fundamentally changing the companies business practices and seriously hurt their bottom lines.

DelBene was one of the first lawmakers to introduce privacy legislation back in 2018, just as the tech industry was beginning to push for a light-touch federal privacy law. Her legislation, which would give users control over whether companies can share or sell their private data, has drawn support from industry groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Some privacy advocates say her legislation, the Information Transparency and Personal Data Control Act, doesnt give consumers enough rights and would undercut tougher state laws. But DelBene says the legislation is a compromise that protects consumers rights while helping small businesses stay afloat.

The important thing on privacy is that we have a consistent policy across the country so peoples rights are protected everywhere, DelBene said. We have five different state laws now and theyre all different. That makes it incredibly difficult for small businesses and others to be able to keep up with different policies and how to apply those different policies.

Its unclear whether the American Choice and Innovation Online Act will go to a vote over the next few months. But either way, DelBene has staked out a position as a lawmaker whos willing to support the tech industrys efforts.

She looks at policy questions and she really tries to call them as she sees them, said Atkinson, of ITIF. In this case, she firmly believes that these innovations are going to be critical to our countrys future. Shes willing to stand up and say that.

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Congress is trying to rein in Big Tech. This lawmaker could stand in their way. - POLITICO

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, companies across the tech industry rushed out messaging on where they stood. Apple said its health plan had long covered travel costs for out-of-state reproductive health care; Microsoft said it would expand its health coverage to include travel costs for abortion; Google even said it would pay for employees to relocate in light of the ruling, no questions asked.

For the most part, they were quick, makeshift policies aligning these companies with the right to choose and granting benefits that supported that stance. But by and large, their responses werent full-throated repudiations of the Supreme Courts ruling, let alone stands against any state that would seek to ban abortion.

There are plenty of firmer steps these companies could take. For the most part, companies continue to donate to anti-abortion candidates, and Uber, Match, and AT&T have, as recently as last year, funded a Republican group that pushed for Roe to be overturned, as noted by Popular Information. Regulators have called on Google to alter its Search products to avoid recommending anti-abortion clinics but the company has broadly ignored the calls. More urgently, major tech firms across the board have yet to announce new steps or commitments to safeguard the data on our phones, which remain some of the biggest threats to abortion seekers.

This is not a solution, the Alphabet Workers Union, an organization representing hundreds of Google employees and contractors, wrote on Twitter about Googles relocation offer.

Labor organizations more broadly have been willing to take a firmer stand and warn of the effects of this ruling. The Communications Workers of America, which is in the process of organizing many tech retail workers, warned of devastating economic effects for women, and the president of the AFL-CIO, the USs largest union group, said the rule was a devastating blow to working women and families across this country.

Theres now a stark generational divide between workers who want to see their companies getting involved in political matters and those whod like to see their companies staying quiet. Workers under the age of 45 are more than three times as likely to want their companies to take a stand on political issues, according to research from employee analytics firm Perceptyx. And whether companies speak out or fail to in a timely manner, as Disney did with the Dont Say Gay bill in Florida can have a material impact on whether these younger employees want to work somewhere.

There is a rush for talent, and people want to work for companies whose values and mission and policies they believe in, says Dan Bross, a former senior director of business and corporate responsibility at Microsoft.

But taking a stand on social issues has grown more complicated for big tech companies as their footprints have expanded beyond Silicon Valley and into states that continue to pass laws that clash with their progressive values.

In just the past few years, Apple broke ground on an Austin, Texas campus that could eventually hold up to 15,000 people; Amazon started building a second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, where its already hit 5,000 employees; Google opened a cloud computing hub in Raleigh, North Carolina thats expected to hit 1,000 people; and Microsoft leased 50,000 square feet of office space in Miami, Florida.

These are all states where Republicans have or hope to put restrictions on abortion. That can put companies in a difficult spot, stuck between employees who want to see action and politicians hostile to pushback.

If this is something thats in line with your values, you better be out in front of it, Emily Killham, director of research and insights with Perceptyx, says shed tell corporate clients. If its not in line with stated corporate values, its more possible for you to take a pass.

When Disney chose to stay quiet over Floridas Dont Say Gay bill, the company faced internal backlash because theyve been well known for a long time with employees for being very forward facing in terms of the LGBTQ community. But, Killham points out, Disney hasnt made a statement on gun control, and I havent seen their employees say theyre not taking a stance on every progressive issue.

One way companies feel safer taking a stand is when they do so as a group, says Bross, who was a founding co-chair of the Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality, which brings together more than two dozen companies to advance LGBTI rights. Companies who may not want to be as bold or are concerned about having the spotlight shined on them often look for opportunities to engage in coalition work, Bross says.

They also look to the rest of the industry to see what peers are doing. In the case of abortion, tech companies had been starting to add benefits covering legal or out-of-state travel costs since Texas adopted a restrictive abortion law last year. That made it easier for other companies to make the same commitments last week a list compiled by The New York Times shows similar commitments from not just tech firms but also media groups, banks, and retailers like Dicks.

Killham says that these quieter internal actions are often preferred. In states with abortion ban trigger laws, employees desire for private actions nearly doubled. They mostly just wanted a statement, Killham says. They wanted to know where their company stood on the issue. And employees in those states didnt want to see their companies abandon them by pulling out of the region either. If you have a large contingent of employees in Texas, for example, youre not really doing your people any favors by closing the office. Thats not looking out for your employees.

That means that even as big tech companies continue to expand in states that are restricting abortion rights, they may still be able to signal their progressive credentials to employees without setting themselves up for political pushback.

Still, Bross says that how companies speak out and the issues they choose to speak out on has the potential to be shaped by what workers want far more today than in decades past.

The employee voice has never been more important or stronger than it is now, he says.

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Why big tech companies are so quiet on abortion rights - The Verge

A better understanding of the intersection between data privacy and antitrust laws could lead to more effective regulation of tech giants.

That's according to Erika Douglas, assistant law professor at the Temple University Beasley School of Law. Douglas recently spoke on how data privacy and antitrust laws can rein in the power of tech giants during the American Antitrust Institute's 23rd annual policy conference in Washington, D.C.

Douglas said more work is needed to understand the interactions between the two types of laws, particularly before a federal data privacy law wins approval. There has been recent bipartisan momentum for a federal data privacy bill, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, also known as the "three corners" bill.

In this Q&A, Douglas discusses why a better understanding of the intersection between these two types of laws is critical, particularly for the success of antitrust cases already being brought against large tech companies like Google and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook.

Why do you think it's important to discuss the intersection of antitrust and data privacy laws?

Erika Douglas: It's a thousand antitrust actions and a thousand different privacy reforms, but until a couple of years ago, there was not very much dialogue between the two of them, particularly in the U.S. There's a bit more of this discussion of how the two work together in the European Union because they have stronger privacy laws and competition laws and it's enforced more often. The U.S. is coming around to these big battles against Google and Facebook. They don't get much attention, but there are allegations in both the Google and the Facebook case that they used their monopoly power to erode privacy. Did they? Is that why privacy was eroded or was privacy eroded for some other reason? There are a lot of questions there.

What might some of the challenges be for antitrust law if a federal data privacy law were enacted?

Douglas: What is interesting here for antitrust is almost all of those statutes, including the three corners bill, are making data privacy more of a right. So are state laws. The flurry of mini General Data Protection Regulations [the European Union privacy law] at the state level are turning privacy into a right. And privacy in the U.S. has been a consumer protection interest, but it hasn't been a right. A right is something different in law, and a right is more difficult for antitrust law to deal with because antitrust law equates everything to quantitative, monetary terms.

But if privacy is a right, I think that's going to be a real challenge for antitrust law, because how do you compare something that's quantifiable in competition to something that is a right or interest? That means we'll have to think a little bit more about exceptions or immunities in between data privacy and antitrust law.

This is going to become an issue if and when the U.S. gets federal omnibus privacy law, which is still a big question mark in people's minds. The three corners bill is definitely progress; it's more bipartisan support than we've seen before.

What other challenges might arise from implementing a federal data privacy law without fully understanding its interaction with antitrust law?

Douglas: When we do get that privacy law, there will be some big questions. You can see in that bill there's a duty of loyalty [acting in the best interest of users] for example that requires data minimization [limiting user data collection]. But antitrust law is really seeking data flow [greater exchange of data between companies] right now. There are all these proposals for legislation in antitrust law that would mandate interoperability. So how do you reconcile at a policy level and then at a legislative level data minimization on one hand, and data flow on the other hand? There are ways to reconcile them, and there are ways to have interoperability that maintains privacy, but the two legislative arcs seem to be going in different directions.

There has to be better understanding here to have effective digital policy. Erika DouglasAssistant law professor, Temple University Beasley School of Law

As policymakers consider data privacy law and antitrust law reform, should they be taking these conflicts into consideration?

Douglas: You can see some consideration of it for example in Klobuchar's bill, the American Choice and Innovation Online Act, that would impose mandatory [data] interoperability. There is an exception for privacy, but privacy isn't defined. If we think competition is more important than privacy, don't include exceptions. If you're going to include exceptions, what does that mean? Because large digital platforms are going to try to fall within the exceptions related to privacy, which are not defined in the legislation. There's a thin consideration of it on the antitrust side. On the privacy side, there's almost no consideration of antitrust law. To be fair, in the three corners bill, there are exceptions for compliance with other federal law that could, without mentioning antitrust law, potentially apply to antitrust law.

Will a better understanding of the intersection of data privacy and antitrust law ultimately lead to better regulation of digital giants?

Douglas: It definitely will lead to more sophisticated and nuanced regulation that has more chance of success. We've talked about the tension between these two areas, but there are many commonalities. The tensions are a [more complex] digital policy question to answer. They're both seeking to encourage consumer choice, and they're both combatting corporate power. But if they're going to do that in a way that is successful and leads to comprehensive, effective digital policy, we need to think about those escape hatches that are appropriate on each side, or how the law might be used in a way that's unexpected because one side argues there's a conflict. You can see this playing out in cases like Epic vs. Apple, where Apple is engaging in anticompetitive conduct according to the Northern District of California, but Apple then proved data privacy considerations were a justification. It's a useful example. If these two areas of law don't think about their interactions with each other, then big cases against big platforms might be unsuccessful for privacy law reasons. There has to be better understanding here to have effective digital policy.

Editor's note: Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Makenzie Holland is a news writer covering big tech and federal regulation. Prior to joining TechTarget, she was a general reporter for theWilmington StarNewsand a crime and education reporter at theWabash Plain Dealer.

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Big tech regulation needs both privacy and antitrust reform - TechTarget

Elon Musk has proclaimed himself to be a free speech absolutist though reports of the way employees of his companies have been treated when exercising their free speech rights to criticise him might indicate that his commitment to free speech has its limits. But as Musks bid to takeover Twitter progresses in fits and starts, the potential for anyone to access and control billions of opinions around the world for the right sum should focus all our minds on the need to protect an almost forgotten rightthe right to freedom of thought.

In 1942 the U.S. Supreme Court wrote Freedom to think is absolute of its own nature, the most tyrannical government is powerless to control the inward workings of the mind. The assumption that getting inside our heads is a practical impossibility may have prevented lawyers and legislators from dwelling too much on putting in place regulation that protects our inner lives. But it has not stopped powerful people trying to access and control our minds for centuries.

At his trial for War Crimes in Nuremberg after the Second World War, Albert Speer, Hitlers former Minister of Armaments, explaining the power of the Nazis propaganda machine said: Through technical devices such as radio and loudspeaker 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. Today the danger of being terrorized by technocracy threatens every country in the world.

When whole communities are deprived of independent thought, it undermines their individual rights to freedom of thought and opinion. But it is not only a threat to the rights of the people who are manipulated. As the world saw with Nazi Germany, it becomes a threat to all our rights. Tragically, Speers warning is acutely resonant in the 21st-century as technology has been harnessed as an even more efficient tool for manipulation and control of the minds of populations with devastating consequences.

Facebooks role in facilitating genocide in Myanmar, a country where the platform turned into a beast according to UN factfinders was a wake up call to the potential for social media profiling and targeting to twist peoples minds inciting deadly violence. Facebook committed to doing better, but as the events that played out across the worlds screens from the U.S. Capitol on 6 January last year and the ongoing ethnic violence in Ethiopia today show, their approach is hopelessly inadequate.

It is not just because of the enormous challenge of content moderation on a global platform, the business model of social media based on surveillance advertising facilitates the hijacking of user engagement to deadly effect. An investigation by the campaign group Global Witness last year showed that they were able to get inflammatory adverts approved on Facebook to target individuals in Northern Ireland across the sectarian divide at a time of heightened tensions. When propaganda can be automated, curated and targeted to reach billions worldwide for profit, it is an existential threat to humanity and one that none of us can afford to ignore.

It may have been Facebook in the frame for these incidences of violence, but a global platform like Twitter could be an equally powerful tool for manipulation on a massive scale as Donald Trump well knew. Twitter is valuable, not because of what you can say on the platform, but because of the billions of opinions you can control through the curation of individual news feeds.

Increasingly the purpose of technological innovations, whether in the online environment or using big data, artificial intelligence or neuroscience is, precisely, to access and control the inner workings of our minds. That is where the money is. Inferences drawn from huge pools of data about us are used to decide if we are susceptible to gambling or prone to conspiracy theories, if we are anxious or over-confident so that our vulnerabilities can be managed, sold and exploited. Our minds are a valuable commodity in both the commercial and the political spheres.

Technology is being developed not only to predict our political leanings from our faces, but also to identify our individual psychological buttons and to press them in ways that might make it more or less likely that youll get off the couch and go out and vote. The rise of neuropolitics and the use of political behavioural psychography in electoral processes around the world is problematic because it undermines the foundations of democracy, no matter who is paying for it or which way you vote.

The use of these tactics spans ideological divides but we when we are talking about mass mind control, the implications are so profound and devastating that the ends can never justify the means. Politics is always about influence and persuasion, but democracy relies on the votes of individuals who have formed their opinions free from manipulation. At a time when many of us get most, or all of our information online, we need to make sure that our minds cannot be easily hijacked and sold to the highest bidder. The Washington DC Attorney Generals recent move to sue Mark Zuckerberg personally for Facebooks role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal may mark a shift in the right direction. Free flows of information allow us to form our opinions freely, we cannot afford to make one person the global gatekeeper to our minds, no matter how keen they may seem to be on freedom.

Its not just about social media. Technologists have ambitions beyond the screens we stare at and the enthralling devices we have glued to our palms. Elon Musks Neuralink has its sights set on nothing less than direct access to our brains. It claims to be designing the first neural implant that will let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go. Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) wont just control the way we receive information, they will control how our minds meet the world.

When Facebook announced its own project to develop non-invasive BCI in 2017, it promised that it would only read the thoughts you wanted it to. In 2021, it shelved the project. Perhaps it realised direct access to the human mind was just a bridge to far. Reading our minds in real time is only a part of it, in 2019, neuroscientists published an experiment where, by implanting electrodes into the brains of mice they could make the animals see things that were simply not there. If you worry about deepfakes, imagine how much more dangerous they could be if they were not on your screen but actually in your head.

While brain implants for manipulative marketing or mind-reading may not sound too appealing, when dressed up as health tech, these tools suddenly become saleable. Musk has reportedly claimed that Neuralink could help control hormone levels and mood to our advantage. But if your hormone levels can be changed to alter your brain to your advantage, they may also be altered to the advantage of someone else if that was more profitable or politically expedient. And imagine if you had to upgrade your brain as often as your phone to deal with those tricky built-in downgrades depleting your battery and clogging up your memory just that bit faster with every new model.

Whether we are looking at the global management of information flows or the tiny threads of Neuralinks brain-computer-interface pushing through our skulls, we need to wake up to the fundamental threat of systems that allow direct access to our minds en masse.

While freedom of speech can be limited in certain circumstances, the right to freedom of thought is absolute in international human rights law. It means that we have the right to keep our thoughts private, not to be penalized for our thoughts alone, and to keep our inner lives free from manipulation. We can no longer rely on the Supreme Courts outdated assumption that no one can control the inward workings of our mind. Whether or not the claims are overblown, technology is already trading on its potential to do just that.

We need freedom of thought to combat climate change, racism and global poverty, and to fall in love, laugh and dream. It is crucial to the cultural, scientific, political and emotional life in our societies. Once we lose it we may never get it back. Musks takeover of Twitter combined with his ambitions for Neuralink make the threat of big tech to our freedom of thought impossible to ignore.

We need serious regulation to check the systems that want get inside our heads and we need it now. Tackling the business models underpinning social media and banning the use of BCIs as consumer products before they become a mass-market reality would be first, but urgent steps. We must learn from history the dangers of letting one man control the minds of millions or billions of people and we must be prepared to say no before it is too late.

Its not about Elon Musk, its about anyone having that kind of access to your mind. Our future should not be built on the best way to monetise the global population and obtain world domination for the few. It must be grounded in what it means to be human, and for that, we must have the freedom to think.

Adapted from Alegres new book Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate our Minds by Susie Alegre, published by Atlantic Books

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We're Dangerously Close to Giving Big Tech Control Of Our Thoughts - TIME

Giving the government final approval on whether, for instance, an algorithm could prejudice against a particular group of people, is potentially a model that could be exported elsewhere. But such power becomes menacing in the hands of an all-surveilling Chinese state accused of genocide.

Angela Zhang, an antitrust specialist and associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, calls the regulatory shifts in China unique, in large part because of the countrys top-down political system and relative lack of checks and balances. And, Fung adds, much of Chinas approach to tech regulation relies on draconian laws such as the real-name policy, which requires that people link government identification to online activities. Such a policy would be unthinkable in a liberal democracy, Webster argues.

Chinas tech regulation goals are often in direct contradiction to what the rest of the world is trying to do. Nothing, or very little about whats being done in China, is reining in the power of the greatest data processor of them all: the Chinese government, says Jamie Susskind, a barrister specializing in data and tech at London law firm 11KBW. Within China, officials have focused their attention on regulating domestic tech companies to the point of submission. The broader techlash has already resulted in Alibaba cofounder and executive chair Jack Ma stepping back from public life and is rumored to be behind the decision of Zhang Yiming, ByteDances founder, to step down as CEO.

The dramatic fall of Ma is typical of Chinas approach to regulation. When we start being starry-eyed about the Chinese model of enforcement, we've lost track of the fact that regulation isn't just supposed to rein in private companies, Susskind says. It's also supposed to limit the power of the state. In China, thats rarely the case. The challenge, Webster adds, is in unpicking the areas in which China and the rest of the world share common goalsand areas in which China is pursuing goals that democracies would find abhorrent.

Take Chinas draft rules on synthetic media as one example. Presented in January, the proposals call for limits to be placed on the spread of deepfake contentan issue that has blighted not just China but the entire world. Under the rules, anything synthetic cannot be promoted through algorithms. Apps that promote deepfake content could face criminal prosecution and fines of up to RMB100,000 ($15,000). However, China has been one of the main developers of deepfake technology, including homegrown app Zao, which became popular in 2019.

But Chinas recent wave of eye-catching moves against big tech is also a sign of officials playing catch-up with the rest of the world. For years, the country has, like many others, let the tech sector run rampant as a key driver of economic growth. And, as a result, the sector was closely tied to the political elite. Alibabas Ma, for example, has been a member of the Chinese Communist Party since the 1980s. Such closeness has allowed certain tech founders to lobby officials for preferential treatment. Chinese regulation used to be very lax, says Zhang. The recent enforcement is mostly restoring some balance between regulation and innovation.

And, in some instances, Chinese policymakers are adapting ideas from the West. The EUs General Data Protection Regulation not only inspired the California Consumer Privacy Act but also similar moves within China, including that countrys Personal Information Protection Law, which limits how much personal data private companies can collect. (The state, of course, can collect all it wants.) The concept of watching what the world is doing, then molding a China-suitable solution, isnt unique to tech, Webster says. This is just how Chinas policy makers work: They actively compare other systems.

Chinese regulators might be cribbing from elsewhere to an extent, but theyre very much forging their own path with how they seek to control the tech sector. And, as more regulation rolls in, it will only further splinter an already splintered internet. But, Webster argues, there may be lessons to learn from what China is tackling, rathan than how its going about it. There are smart people working hard to try to reshape the Chinese digital economy, he says. The job is not that different, even though the political systems are.

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China Is Tightening Its Grip on Big Tech - WIRED