The
Splintering Internet of the
By Helen Zhang and John Fowler
Mainstream social media has now been (some argue, mercifully) free of former-U.S. President Trump for almost a year. One year on, we examine the impact of this event and the precedents it set for the Big Tech industry in regulating the right to free speech. Washington v Silicon Valley President Trump's final year in office brought the battle between Washington and Silicon Valley into clear focus.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Brazilian President Bolsonaro commented: A world where [Venezuelan president Nicolás] Maduro is on social media, but [President] Trump is suspended, cannot be normal.
Over the 2020 northern summer, Trump tried to force the sale of the Chinese-owned social media app, TikTok. His heavy-handed intrusions were roundly criticised, but we’ll go ahead and call that skirmish a stalemate.
Mexican President Obrador observed: Where is the law, where is the regulation, what are the norms? This is an issue of government, this is not an issue for private companies.
The final fortnight of his presidency saw the Twitter v Trump showdown, and the Big Tech v Parler stoush.
Finally, influential Indian politician Tejasvi Surya opined: If they can do this to POTUS, they can do this to anyone. The sooner India reviews intermediaries regulations, the better for our democracy.
Taken as a whole, the outcomes of these clashes made it easy to see where the future of political power lies. This was due in no small part to Congress ceding their political power by being slow to intervene. Left unregulated, Big Tech executives will become political king-makers in a way 20th-century newspaper barons could never have dreamed. 14
Other nations have been watching, very closely What do Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and India have in common? Former-German Chancellor Angela Merkel said via her spokesman: [Freedom of speech] can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators, not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms.
We could include many more examples, but you're busy people. The point is, politicians from the far left, the far right, and everywhere in between are united on one thing: only government can regulate free speech, and reliance on U.S. ‘Big Tech’ for critical infrastructure and ecosystems like social media and web hosting is a serious threat to national security. Perhaps we are cynics, but despite what world leaders might say, this is about power, not values. Social media, e-commerce, and the rise of remote work all suggest an increasingly online future. The internet is like the Iron Throne; whoever controls it, controls the country.
