Context: The Indian government announced a sweeping array of rules reining-in social media. Specifically, social media platforms are required to become “more responsible and more accountable” for the content they carry.

Global Trend:

• Big Tech needs reining in for many reasons and India is by no means alone in taking a big swing at Big Tech.
• India joins other governments around the world that have found a common adversary: Companies with hundreds of millions and even billions in their thrall and the power to control the three most critical levers of modern times, data, attention and the popular narrative.

Who gets to decide what is legitimate free speech — Big Government or Big Tech?

• One argument for government intervention rests on the presumption that it is never in the commercial interest of Big Tech to remove offensive speech as this content goes viral more readily, bringing in more eyeballs, more data and more advertising revenue.
  • To counter this argument, Big Tech proponents would contend that the companies are getting smarter about the risks of allowing such content on their systems and will inevitably find it in their self-interest to pre-emptively kill it.
• A second argument in favor of government would be as follows: States are the guardians of the public interest.
  • In democratic societies, governments are elected to represent the will of the people. So if there is a hard choice to be made about curtailing speech or permitting it, it seems only natural to turn to the public guardian.
  • The counter to this theory would be that, in practice, even democratically elected governments are far from perfect; in fact according to The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, both India (ranked 53rd ) and the US (ranked 25th) are “flawed democracies”.
  • In parallel, the argument for Big Tech to be the upholder of the public interest could rest on the theory that well-functioning markets are superior to flawed democracies in optimizing social welfare. In such market settings, there is “voting” with one’s wallet and ones attention.
  • The counter-argument to this view would be that the tech industry is itself deeply flawed: There is a lack of sufficient choice of platforms; there are asymmetries in power between the companies and users and Big Tech is amassing data on the citizens and using this information for its own purposes.
• A third perspective is to acknowledge it doesn’t matter who is the “true” upholder of the public interest; for all practical purposes, the outcome of the struggle between Big Government and Big Tech will be determined by relative bargaining power.
  • While governments technically have the ability to take entire platforms offline within the borders of their countries, these platforms are now so enormous that their users would revolt. This is why we witnessed the audacity, recently, of Google and Facebook, threatening to de-platform Australia.

Conclusion:

• There are gigantic tech companies that have thrown their hats into the geopolitical ring.
• Any government, India’s included, that believes it can force these companies to do their bidding arbitrarily must reckon with this new dynamic of bargaining power between Big Government and Big Tech.
• India can impose a ban on TikTok and the politician’s children are deprived of endless hours of entertaining video.
• But if it turns the lights out on Twitter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would instantaneously deprive himself of 66 million followers. Twitter knows that and the negotiators within the government know that as well.

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/big-tech-government-regulation-social-media-giants-it-ruls-7206581/

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