Big Tech Wants to Write the New Rules on Internet Regulation – The New Republic

Indeed, not everyone shares in Facebooks particular vision of free communal info-abundance underwritten by bulk data collection and addictive algorithms. Nor do they care for what Facebook has become. From political disinformation to authoritarian state propaganda to surveillance-as-a-business-model to the hollowing out of arts, culture, and media, Facebook, and its influence on the internet, has been a net loss for the world. The company aspires toward liberalish valuesfor instance, Zuckerberg talks about voice rather than free speechbut all of this has been window-dressing for its own destructive pursuit of scale, power, and profit.

Following a pattern that weve seen in the more contrite recent statements from platform superpowers, Clegg seems to say that Facebook wants to do betterit just needs help. As society grapples with how to address misinformation, harmful content, and rising polarization, Facebook research could provide insights that help design evidence-based solutions, writes Clegg, as if Facebook, with its endless reams of data, insight into its own networks, and $62 billion in cash on hand couldnt be doing far more to tackle these problems. In helping address these concerns, Clegg also offers support for a digital regulatorsomething that would be useful but potentially no more so than the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice, which have wide powers to sue Facebook, initiate antitrust proceedings, and enforce the law. (In working to shape government regulation, Facebook spent almost $20 million on D.C. lobbying last year, more than any other tech company.)

Parsing Nick Cleggs statementsand the overall sincerity of Facebooks pledgesmay be a fools game. The answer to regulating the internet, as Jillian C. York noted, is to keep Facebook out of any and all decisions about regulating the internet. Companies dont give up power voluntarily; they cede ground knowing they can make it up elsewhere. Cleggs op-ed has all the hallmarks of this kind of bait and switch. It offers a few paper-thin reforms that might pass bipartisan musterif Congress can find its better angelsthat will surely be undone after lawyers and lobbyists begin chiseling away at them. If theres to be a future open and global internet, it should represent everything Facebook is not. The scary and exciting thing is that we dont yet know how to bring that into being.

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Big Tech Wants to Write the New Rules on Internet Regulation - The New Republic