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Is it time to clip the wings of Big Tech?
Kaboggoza Kibudde
What you need to know:
- In all cases, a private company arrived in the name of ‘business’ only to end up in politics. And except for a few beneficiaries, company rule was detrimental to local communities and their ways of life.
In 1600, a group of British traders formed a company to trade in essential commodities on the Indian subcontinent.
This company, named the East India Company, began by establishing factories and later grew to account for half of the world trade in the mid-1700s and 1800s.
Along the way, the company which had come ‘to trade’ upgraded from security guards to private armies comprising infantry, cavalry, and artillery regimens!
Ostensibly, this was to protect its trade. Yet, shortly afterward, the company was involving itself in local politics, taking sides in the name of ‘helping’ when in reality, it was exercising divide and rule.
Once most internal states had been weakened, EIC became more aggressive! It waged war against the remaining Indian rulers using troops primarily made up of locals (sounds familiar?).
What followed was a century of exploitation, plunder, and untold suffering for the people of India. This is because a private company answers to its shareholders, not the people. Its concern is profit, not people’s welfare.
This company rule of society did not stop in India. It also happened in North America (under the London Company), Southern Africa (British South Africa Company), and Kenya and Uganda (under the Imperial British East African Company (IBEACO)).
In all cases, a private company arrived in the name of ‘business’ only to end up in politics. And except for a few beneficiaries, company rule was detrimental to local communities and their ways of life.
Unfortunately, history seems to be repeating itself lately as privately-owned technology companies become increasingly involved in politics.
In the wake of the Myanmar coup, Facebook did not stop at saying it was “closely monitoring political events in Myanmar as they unfold.”
It unilaterally denied access to the views of the military by deleting the latter’s pages. Before that, it had interfered in Uganda’s election by deleting Ugandan government officials’ accounts without any due process.
However, Facebook’s saved its boldest show of might for the USA, a country that prides itself in freedom of expression.
Alongside Twitter, it effectively suppressed the views of then-sitting president Donald Trump by deleting his accounts. When Trump and his supporters sought refuge in an emerging platform called Parler, Parler was removed from Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon web services in a clear demonstration of these corporations’ growing power.
Shamelessly, these corporations don’t follow the known principles of justice, such as the right to a fair hearing.
They simply follow in-house guidelines in line with shareholders’ interests. But should decisions that affect our way of life be decided in a private company’s boardroom? How would we challenge such decisions?
In their defence, these companies say they couldn’t look on as hate speech and dangerous propaganda were being spewed on their platforms but shouldn’t it be the courts to decide what counts as hate speech?
Others say privately-owned companies are free to decide who to deal with. If so, what happens when a privately-owned bus company chooses to carry only those passengers it feels are well-intentioned (e.g., based on race or political creed)?
Because this is precisely what American privately-owned buses were doing in the civil rights era, and they were stopped from doing as they pleased.
Why? Because when a private company offers a service that is too essential to our way of life, it ceases to be a purely private affair; public interest comes in.
This is where we now find ourselves with Big Tech.
Mr Kibudde is a socio-political thinker
[email protected] Twitter: @kkaboggoza
