When the Internet first started taking root, many enthusiasts including myself thought it would become a great connector of people around the world. It would build mutual understanding and maybe even foster peace.
How incredibly naive, as we are now discovering. The latest news from The New York Times is that Russia is cracking down on Facebook, Twitter and Google for allowing their platforms to be used by anti-goverment protestors. The article notes that governments in India, Myanmar, Poland, Turkey, Belarus and other countries are taking steps against livestreaming of user content. “All of these policies will have the effect of creating a fractured internet, where people have different access to different content,” a German expert is quoted as saying.
The article does not mention that China, the world’s second largest economy, has also cracked down on Alibaba and ByteDance, two of that country’s largest social media purveyors. The Communist government forced out the founders of the two companies and is re-asserting governmental and Communist Party control.
The government crackdowns are just a piece of the story. The others are that bad actors supported by governments have used the open Internet to fracture democracies, as seen in the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C. The open nature of America’s Information Technology and computing systems also has allowed China, in particular, to penetrate our systems on a massive scale, eroding any concept of national security.
And we also see abuses coming from the tech giants themselves–they are engaged in massive, persistent violations of privacy. The latest is that Siri and Alexa may start listening in on users’ conversations to identify key words and then use that information to market products and services.
No one has clean hands, it seems. We have built these incredible communications platforms and it turns out that they have unacceptable downside risks. I would predict the German expert is right–we will have to build different Internets that protect us from each other. And as I argue in my new book, A Grand Strategy: Countering China, Taming Technology, and Restoring the Media, Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and friends will have to start taking responsibility for the user content they post. The argument that they are neutral meeting grounds has been revealed to be specious–they use algorithms to fan the flames of hate and discord. That’s how they make money–by eroding the foundations of our democracy. It’s time to end that charade.
