Social media threat to society and security

THE current moment in world history is very painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of dictatorships and mafia states, such as Vladimir Putin's Russia, are being established. In the United States, President Donald Trump would like to put himself in a Mafia-style state, but he can't, because of the Constitution, other institutions, and a very vibrent civil society.

It is not just the survival of open society; it is the survival of all our civilizations in question. Raised leaders like Kim Jong in North Korea and Trump in the United States have much to do with something like that. Both seem willing to risk a nuclear war to keep themselves in power. But the root of the problem lies deeper. Mankind's ability to exploit the forces of nature, for constructive purposes of destructiveness, continues to grow as our ability to govern ourselves fluctuates, and now lies at the weakest possible point.

Establishing monopolistic behavior; giant American Internet platforms are contributing strongly to the American government's potential. These companies have often played an innovative and liberating role. But, while Facebook and Google have become even more powerful, they have become barriers to innovation, and they have caused a lot of problems that we've only started to understand.

Companies take their profit by detonated their environment. Oil and mining companies detonate the physical environment; social media companies explode the social environment. Especially this is bad, because these companies influence the way they think and behave without being aware. This interferes with the functioning of democracy and the integrity of the elections.

Because Internet platform companies are networks, they enjoy increasing marginal returns, accounting for their phenomenal growth. The effect of the network is really transformative and unprecedented, but it's also unstable. It took Facebook eight and a half years to reach a billion users, and only half of that time to reach the second billion. On this scale, Facebook will no longer have people convert in three years.

Facebook and Google effectively control over half of all digital marketing revenue. To maintain their dominance, they have to share their networks and increase the distribution of user attention. Finally they are doing so, offering their users an appropriate platform. The longer users spend on that platform, the more valuable they become to these companies.

Furthermore, the reason that content providers cannot avoid using platforms and should accept whatever terms they offer them, they also contribute to the benefits of social media companies. True, the extraordinary accountability of these companies is in the function of their responsibility, of avoidance of ʹ and of payment for content on these platforms.

Companies claim they're just distributing the information. But the fact that they are almost-monopolisous distributors makes those public tools that have to be made strict adjustments in order to preserve competition, innovation, and open and fair access.

The real consumers of social media companies are their advertisers. But a new business model is slowly emerging, based not only on marketing but also on selling their products and services directly to users. They detonate the data they control, link the services they offer, and use discriminatory prices to maintain more benefits that they would have to share with their consumers. This increases their profit even more, but the connection of services and discriminatory prices undermine the efficiency of the market economy.

Social media companies deceive their users by manipulating their attention, guiding them to their commercial goals, and by engineering addiction to the services they offer. This can be very painful, especially for teenagers.

There are similarities between Internet platforms and gambling companies. The casinos have developed techniques to trap consumers to the point that they gamble with whatever money they have and even money they don't have.

Something similar and potentially irreversible is happening with human attention in the digital era. This is not a matter of mere distraction or dependence; social media companies are actually urging people to surrender their autonomy. And this power to shape people's attention over and over is focusing on the hands of few companies.

It takes significant effort to preserve and protect what John Stuart Mil called freedom of mind. If you lose once, those who grow up in the digital age may find it hard to regain.

This could have very serious political consequences. People without freedom of mind can easily be manipulated. This danger is not described only in the future; it played an important role in the 2016 presidential election.

There is an even more alarming perspective on the horizon: the alliance between authoritarian and large states, the data collection monopolies, bringing together the emerging corporate surveillance systems with the already developed state surveillance systems. This could result in a network of totalitarian checks such as George Orwell would not have imagined.

The countries in which such unprecedented marriages are possible to happen initially are Russia and China. Chinese IT companies in particular are completely equal to American platforms. They also enjoy the full support and protection of President Xi Jinping's regime. The Chinese government is strong enough to protect its national champions, at least within its borders.

The United States-based IT monopolys are already tempted to release in order to get access to these fast-growing big markets. The dictatorial leaders of these countries can be very happy to cooperate with them in order to improve their methods of control over their populations and in order to increase their power and influence in the United States and the rest of the world.

There is also a growing acceptance of the link between the dominance of platform monopolies and increasing inequality. The concentration of ownership distribution in the hands of few individuals plays luol, but the specific location of IT giants is even more important. They have managed to monopolize power as they compete against each other. They are large enough to overcome the movement that can develop racers, and only they have resources to invade the territory of another country.

Owners of the giant platforms consider themselves masters of the universe. In fact, they are slaves seeking to preserve their dominant position. They are involved in an existential problem to dominate new growth areas that are opening artificial intelligence, such as cars without drivers.

The impact of such innovations in unemployment depends on government policies. The European Union, and in particular Nordic countries, is much more visionary than the United States in their social policies. They protect workers, not jobs. These governments are willing to pay for requalified, panioned, or displaced workers. This gives workers in Nordic countries a greater sense of security and makes them more supportive of technological innovations than workers in the United States.

Internet monopolys have neither the will nor the tendency to protect society against the consequences of the actions they take. This makes them public threats, and is responsible for the regulatory authorities to protect society from them. In the United States, regulators are not strong enough to withstand the political influence of these monopolies. The EU is better off because there is no giant platform of it.

The EU uses another definition of monopoly power in contrast to the United States. While American law focuses principally on monopolies created by embezzlement, European law does not allow abuse with monopoly power regardless of how it has become monopoly. Europe has a much greater protection of privacy and data than American laws offer.

Furthermore, American law has adopted a strange doctrine that measures damage based on the price paid by consumers for the services received. But this is impossible to prove, since most giant Internet platforms guarantee their services for free. Moreover, the doctrine ignores the valuable data that platform companies collect from their users.

EU Commissioner for the Margrethe Vestagher Assembly is the champion of the European effort. It took the EU seven years to prepare a case against Google. But as a result of his success, the process of institution of adequate rules has been quite accelerated. For more, thanks to Verstager's efforts, European efforts have begun to affect attitudes related to this situation in the United States.

It's just a matter of time before the global domination of American Internet companies is broken. The adjustment and taxation, led by Vestager, will mark their disarray.

Translated from Periscope taken from Project Syndicate