‘Big Tech’, a term typically used to refer to major influential U.S. technology companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple and others, has recently been spotlighted on the national stage due to two major events: controversy surrounding Twitter and Facebook’s response to the New York Post’s publishing of alleged Hunter Biden emails, and the U.S. Department of Justice’s filing of an antitrust lawsuit filed against Google.
Last week, the New York Post published a story focused on incriminating emails, documents and pictures allegedly taken from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden. Within hours, and despite a lack of consensus for or against the article’s validity, Twitter began locking out accounts that posted links to the story. Locked accounts included those of the New York Post, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, House Republicans, the official Trump Campaign account, and many others, prompting backlash from politicians and media outlets alike. Furthermore, Twitter restricted the ability of users to share the link with others, limiting the story’s ability to be spread through the network. Facebook similarly restricted links to the Post’s exposé, citing its policies against “spreading misinformation.”
Besides the Twitter and Facebook controversy, another major technology-related event recently occurred: the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google for “uncompetitive tactics to preserve a monopoly for its flagship search engine and related advertising business.” This is the most aggressive U.S. legal challenge to a company’s dominance in the tech sector in more than two decades. The suit asserts that Google uses anticompetitive business practices, such as paying Apple billions of dollars to be the default search engine for Safari, to maintain its dominance in internet searches. Besides the Justice Department, nearly all U.S. state attorneys are separately investigating Google, with 11 already having joined the Department’s case.
While these two cases have received much attention, controversies involving Big Tech are frequently overshadowed by other news, such as the recent Black Lives Matter movement and the economic downturn. Yet, there has been a steadily growing backlash among Americans against Big Tech and social media. Several key studies have been conducted among American consumers about their views on big tech, and their results show growing unfavorability towards many of the major technology companies.
According to a survey by The Verge, among respondents 72% said Facebook has “too much power”, 51% said Google and Youtube should be “split into separate companies”, and 56% expressed favorability to the government “breaking up tech companies” if they control “too much” of the economy. Additionally, only 43% and 41% of respondents would trust Twitter and Facebook with their information, and just 33% would be disappointed if Twitter no longer existed.
Alongside The Verge, The Pew Research Center has also looked into American’s views on social media and technology giants. In a 2019 study, it was reported that the percentage of people who say that “technology companies have a positive effect on the way things are going” has declined from 71% in 2015 to 50% in 2019, a decrease of over 20%. In that same survey over the same period, negative views of technology companies’ “effects on the country” have nearly doubled.
In a similar 2018 study, about 72% of Americans said that it is “somewhat or very likely” that social media sites “intentionally censor political viewpoints they find objectionable.” Furthermore, the percentage of Americans who said that tech companies can be trusted to do the “right thing” about “always or most of the time” was only 28%. Furthermore, 51% said they should be “regulated more” than they were at the time.
The growing cultural discontent with those companies, along with what happened in the past two weeks, could be a harbinger of what is to come in the next few years. People have not responded well to the restrictions imposed by Twitter and Facebook on the Hunter Biden story. Amidst public backlash, the Senate Judiciary Committee expressed plans to subpoena Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, to testify about Twitter’s handling of the controversy. Some Senate Republicans also floated the argument that Twitter was engaging in election interference.
These backlashes, against both Twitter and Facebook for their actions limiting the spread of the New York Post story, are just another example of the present undercurrent of tensions. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 85% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents already believe that social media sites “intentionally censor political viewpoints”, along with 62% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. This indicates broad bipartisan discontent towards the practices of the major social media companies.
As Americans grow more aware of the influence major technology and social media companies have over society, public opinion could soon move in a direction that the American government would not be able to ignore. If public backlash continues to heighten, one may see the alteration or repeal of section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, which has long protected online companies from lawsuits based on the content their users create. There is growing support surrounding the idea of having legally distinct ‘publishers’ and ‘platforms,’ with some arguing that companies should be forced to choose a path- either they can moderate their user’s content (including politics) and be treated as a publisher, or have little-to-no moderation and be treated as a platform. Senator Ted Cruz voiced such an opinion in his op-ed about the 2018 hearing of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg, stating that “in order to be protected by Section 230, companies like Facebook should be ‘neutral public forums.'”
A repeal or amendment of Section 230 is a possibility in the near future, especially if negativity towards the large technology companies continues to grow more and more prevalent. If Big Tech continues to ignore the expanding consumer unfavorability caused by accusations of biased online censorship, and monopolistic practices, the next few years may well be the tipping point for how America views its technology giants– and how public backlash may cause serious legal and economic ramifications for those companies.
