Silicon Valley is killing liberty and democracy
I’ve been mulling over the events of the past week, trying to make sense of what’s going on, and piecing together what it means for tech. And, to be honest, this is the first time in my 35 years on this planet that I’ve felt a genuine sense of dread about the future.
As you are no doubt aware, US president Donald Trump has been banned from nearly every mainstream social media platform, as well as sites like Shopify and Spotify. However, things didn’t stop there. Twitter has banned tens of thousands of “far right” accounts across its service. Amazon meanwhile has terminated Parler’s access to AWS servers. Effectively shutting down the entire company.
Of course many people on the political left are cheering these decisions as a step against what they view has hateful speech and a rise in white supremacy. Though I don’t think they quite realize what’s going on here. It reminds me of the tale of the Monkey’s Paw. You get your wish, but it comes with terrible consequences. I suppose they need to read up on the Night of the Long Knives, the Cambodian Genocide, and Stalin’s purges. That is if there’s anything left to read once they’re done.
De-platforming a sitting US president from virtually all media channels is an unprecedented move in American politics. However, it’s the move to ban sites like Parler that concerns me the most. This would normally fall under anti-trust legislation, but those doing it are hiding behind the shield of morality and public good to virtually eliminate their competitors. I’m beginning to agree with Epic Games in their lawsuit against Apple. While I don’t think their motives are pure, they are in the right. You now have a situation where monolithic private corporations, with power that rivals many nation states, can determine whether your business succeeds or fails, and that’s entirely up to their whims. They don’t have to have a reason, and they receive zero resistance from legislators. And yes, this goes for all political parties. In the US, Republicans had four years to deal with the problem but sat on their hands.
There’s also the very serious matter of thousands of people essentially being purged from these platforms simply for criticizing the ruling powers. People those powers have attempted to bill as white supremacists and all sorts of other ists and isms. Now, I’ve talked to a lot of these people, and they aren’t that. They’re your friends and neighbours. Folks like me who just want to be left alone to do their own thing, without having others poke their nose into their business. They’re not violent, they’re not Nazis. The worst crimes they commit are making cheeky memes that mocks rampant government corruption and bad policy decisions. The violent rhetoric is there, for sure. But as an outsider to US politics, it seems to me that it’s coming almost entirely from one side. That same side that seems to be so gung ho on censoring people and taking their rights away. And I’m sorry, that’s not the dude with the spray tan nor his red hatted supporters.
Now I’m hearing half-serious talk about burning books (due to
“whiteness”), taking kids away from conservative parents, and putting people into concentration camps. As a student of history and politics (I have a B.A. in both), with a focus on Latin American revolutions, this all seems eerily familiar to me. The radicalization through media, the violent rhetoric, the racial scapegoating. The only difference here is the political radicals all seem to be ludicrously wealthy technocrats, rather than your stereotypical cigar smoking, flat cap wearing guerillas. The irony of big corporate powers pushing for a socialist revolution is certainly not lost on me.
I think Silicon Valley and Big Social Media have been very complicit in the violence that has taken place over the last year. I think they’re doing it deliberately. And I think it highlights just how much social media has turned our society into a raging dumpster fire.
The internet is truly a wonderful tool, and arguably one of the single most transformative inventions in human history. But right now, it’s being used by governments and their corporate overlords as a weapon to divide and marginalize, rather than as a path to knowledge and dialogue as it was originally intended. We’re at each others throats all the time now, and it’s benefiting nobody but those aforementioned wealthy technocrats. We have to put a stop to this nonsense before someone goes and does something stupid.
At least there are some folks out there who are trying to reign things in. Tim Barnes Lee, father of the Web, has been very critical of the corporatization of the internet. He’s thinks cyberspace needs a do over, and is currently proposing a new system that focuses on personal online data stores, which he calls “pods”, to give users back control of their digital lives. Elon Musk, perhaps the world’s most famous mad scientist, has been been heavily investing in alt-tech platforms as of late.
These are very important milestones in protecting privacy and hardening the internet against government censorship and corporate interference. Decentralization is the only way forward at this point. But it all seems too little, too late. We were warned about what was happening by people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange a decade ago, but they were largely ignored. (Assange is still being illegally detained by the way.) Now we’re stuck in this dystopian cyberpunk nightmare and desperately trying to claw our way out before all escape routes are closed off.
We, as a society, are at a crossing of the Rubicon moment. Whatever we chose in the coming weeks and months will have major implications that will reach far into the future. Not just in the United States, but around the globe. I hope there are enough people left who still value liberty, and are willing to take a stand against corrupt politicians and corporations who are attempting the biggest power grab in living memory.
