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IT IS a bit too early to start taking bets on 2018’s word of the year, but “techlash” is surely worth a punt. In recent weeks, growing disgruntlement with giant technology companies has hardened into a full-blown backlash. The prevailing mood is that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have grown too big for their boots (see “How Google and Facebook hooked us – and how to break the habit“).
The complaints against the big four are many and varied, from enabling the dissemination of fake news to monopolistic behaviour and rampant hawking of user-generated data. These are genuine concerns that need to be addressed. But, as yet, they do not add up to much more than an incoherent howl of frustration.
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What is desperately needed is a cool-headed critique of what is wrong and how to fix it. Right now, that is a work in progress; the endgame of techlash is impossible to predict. But while some form of reckoning is probably justified, a sense of perspective is required.
We must not forget that the reason the tech giants are in this position is largely because we let them get there. Big tech is merely doing what successful consumer companies have always done: working out what their customers want and giving it to them. We collectively decided that the services on offer were worth the tiny price being charged. Arguably, all that has changed is that our bill has now landed and we are suffering a collective bout of buyer’s remorse.
To be fair, the bill contains hidden extras – alleged manipulation of democratic elections, for example. But as individual consumers, we have little to complain about. These companies provide services that many of us want and like, and do so at very little cost to us besides annoying ads and the collection of information that, unaggregated, is worthless.
“If consumer demand has created a monster, then restraint and knowledge can do much to tame it”
Pointing this out is not an act of self-flagellation, but part of the search for a solution. If consumer demand and our ignorance really have created a monster, then restraint and knowledge can do much to tame it.
Some of that clearly needs to be done on our behalf, through anti-monopoly laws, for example. One of the problems is that big tech has raised the bar for market entry so high that new players don’t stand a chance. Laws such as the European Union’s soon-to-arrive General Data Protection Regulation will help too. Self-regulation is also an option, although it often amounts to little more than powerful industries being allowed to mark their own homework. Perhaps the most useful offer the tech giants could make is meaningful levels of opt-in or opt-out – not a blanket “if you want our services, you have to accept our terms”.
But the biggest lever remains in the hands of consumers. In 2006, in the early days of the age of social media and user-generated content, Time magazine’s person of the year was “YOU”. The cover featured a mirrored panel with the words: “You control the information age. Welcome to your world.”
That may seem like a naive declaration from a different time, but it isn’t. If, like many, you are itching for a techlash, then start by looking in the mirror.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Taming the big tech beasts”
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