Addicts and Social Media distributors

We were warned. Capitalist entrepreneur and founder of Netcape Marc Andreessen wrote a very read essay in 2011, entitled “Why Software is eating the world:” We did not take Andreessen seriously; we thought it was just a metaphor. We are now facing the challenge of extracting the world from the mouth of monopolistic platforms on the Internet.

I used to be an optimist about technology. During my 35-year career in Silicon Valley, I was lucky to be part of personal computers, mobile communications, Internet and social networking industries. Among the highlights of my career were my early investments in Google and Amazon, and of being the mentor of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2006 and 2010.

Each new wave of technology increased productivity and access to knowledge. Each new platform was easier to use and fitr. Technology empowered globalisation and economic growth. For decades, it made the world a better place. We assumed he would always have that role.

Then came 2016, when the Internet also displayed its dark edges. One is connected to individual users. Smartphones with mobile infrastructure LTE created the first platform of the distribution of content that was liquid at any moment, transforming the technological industry and the life of two billion people. With only a little or no regulatory surveillance in most of the world, companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Alibaba and Tencent used techniques similar to propaganda and casino gambling, such as constant reporting and various rewards, to feed psychological dependence.

The other dark side is geopolitical. In the United States, Western Europe and Asia, Internet platforms, particularly Facebook, have allowed the powerful to harm the weak in politics, foreign politics, and commerce. Elections in Europe and the United States have consistently demonstrated that automated social networks can be used to undermine democracy.

The Brexium referendum and presidential elections in the United States in 2016 also found that Facebook allows for a relatively significant advantage of negative messages to positive ones. The authoritarian governments can use Facebook to promote public support for certain depressive policies, as may now take place in Myanmar, Cambodia, the Philippines, and other countries. In some cases Facebook gives support to such governments, as it does to all other large customers.

I am confident that the founders of Facebook, Google and other Internet platforms didn't intend to hurt when they adopted their business models. They were young entrepreneurs, hungry for success. Years have passed in building huge audiences reorganizing the online world around a set of applications that were more personal, more reliable and easier to use than their ancestors. And they didn't make any attempts to mount their efforts long after users got stuck in it. The advertising business patterns they chose were enabled by personalization, which allowed advertisers to charge their messages with unprecedented precision.

But then came the smartphone, which transformed the entire media and effectively put Facebook, Google and others in checking information that was derived from users. Filters that were given to users whatever they wanted had the effect of polarizing the population and lowering the legitimacy of fundamental democratic institutions (most known, press freedom). And the automation that made Internet platforms so profitable left them vulnerable for manipulation by malicious acts everywhere and not just authoritarian governments that are hostile to democracy.

As Andreessen warned, these companies, with their global ambitions, are eating up the world economy. In the process, they're adopting versions of the corporate philosophy of Facebook “moving fast and breaking things” no matter what impact is on people, institutions and democracy. A large minority of citizens in the developed world are part of the filter bubbles created by these platforms of digital counterfeit realities in which existing beliefs become more rigid and extreme.

In the United States, approximately a third of the adult population has become more indifferent to these new ideas, including the demonstrated facts. These people are easily manipulable, a concept that former Google Ethics Tristan Harris called “brain abuse”.

Western democracies are unprepared to address this threat. The United States has no effective regulatory structure for Internet platforms, and it also lacks the political will to create one. The European Union has both a regulatory structure and sufficient political will, but neither is adequate for the challenge. The EU's latest trial against Google with a record $2.7 billion fine for anti-competive behavior was well-informed, yet small. Google had appealed and its investors gathered its shoulders. It could be a good start, but clearly it was insufficient.

We are in critical circumstances. Awareness of the dangers that Internet platform money is growing from a small basis, but the convenience of content and psychological dependence on them are such as it would take a whole generation to influence users differently, as did anti-temorial campaigns. Accepting the devastating effects of monopolies on competition and innovation platforms is greater in Europe than in the United States, but no one has established an effective regulatory strategy. Awareness that platforms can be manipulated to undermine democracy is also growing, but Western governments have yet to invent a defence against it.

Challenges presenting Internet platform monopolies require great effort beyond antitrust implementation. We must accept and address these challenges as a threat to public health. One possibility is that social media treatment is an analogic approach to tobacco and alcohol, combining education and regulation.

The World Economic Forum is meeting in Davos these days, the threat from Internet platform monopolies must be the biggest concern for participants. For the sake of restoring balance to our lives and hoping for our politics, it's time to divide the dividers.

Subtitles by: Periscope