Regulate the Tech Industry
There is little room for agreement across America’s political spectrum, but both Left and Right agree that we are in an era of decline. They may have different reasons and different metrics, but both sides think, on a gut level, that things are getting worse. In fact, they might even agree on some specific things they perceive to be getting worse. For example, nobody seems to like that most phone calls we receive are attempts to scam us. That lived experience is a metonym for the failures of technology writ large.
When you drill down on our shared grievances, a certain connection becomes obvious. There is widespread concern over the effects of screens on children, on the use of online technology to spy on us, the negative psychological effects of social media, the growth of massive data centers, the distractions of laptops in the classroom, the use of AI to destroy jobs and creativity, and the staggering wealth inequality in the United States. All of these issues are related to one central issue: the urgent need to regulate the tech industry.
From students booing AI boosters at their graduations to communities mobilizing to stop data centers, there’s obviously plenty of burning anger out there at the tech industry. A lot of it is down to the feeling that this one Very Special Boy of an industry is just allowed to break the laws that definitely apply to the rest of us.
Ride-share apps were based on massive lawbreaking of local taxi regulations, and then taxi companies were forced to pay to comply with regulations that their Silicon Valley-backed competitors did not. Overnight-stay apps have turned whole neighborhoods into illegal hotels whose housing has been snatched off the market, driving up rents. Social media apps blast a firehouse of misinformation while being a major source of news, yet are not beholden to the rules and regulations we apply to news organizations. So much “artificial intelligence” has been trained on copyrighted material whose authors (including me) have not been compensated for the use of their work. (Not so long ago ordinary people who pirated music and movies faced jail time.) In an especially egregious example, if another industry was making a product that instructed how and then encouraged people to kill themselves, I imagine they would face legal consequences.
Not only do ordinary people see this brazen abuse of power, they are the ones made to bear the burden of handling the consequences. Social media apps and personal devices are the most glaring example. The social media companies build their apps to drive engagement, and knowingly push negative material to do so. Their own internal documents reveal that they know this dynamic has a particularly damaging effect on young people, but they have yet to change their behavior. Because there are no regulations, parents are left alone to navigate all of this. Teen life now revolves around the online world and keeping one’s children from it after a certain age cuts out their social life. That basically means throwing them to the wolves of the tech industry. (On a related note, many everyday tasks, including ordering off of a menu, now require a smartphone to complete.)
Just as corporate America has offloaded so much daily labor onto us, from checking out and bagging our own groceries to checking our own luggage at the airport, it has also offloaded responsibility. The tech giants do whatever they want and if their products cause harm, well, that’s the responsibility of the consumer. After all, they are the revolutionaries moving fast and breaking stuff on the way to a better future!
Perhaps no powerful interest in world history has benefitted from ideology and propaganda more than the tech industry. For 50 years now it has been given a massively positive portrayal in tv, film, and the news media. Its leaders, from Steve Jobs to Elon Musk, are depicted as great men of vision, as if their work is to improve humanity, rather than make money. (The Social Network is a great film for many reasons, but most of all for breaking from this tendency.) We are told that we dare not regulate this out of control behemoth lest we restrict “innovation.” Never mind that the “innovation” in question is usually how to maximize the amount of money squeezed out of consumers and funneled to the overlords.
Despite this grim reality, so many still insist of mouthing the tech industry ideology and passing it off as wisdom. For example, “generative AI is inevitable so you better go along with it and not question it” is a purely ideological statement. However, we have set up a system of social rewards where repeating tech industry propaganda gets mistaken for intelligence.
Despite all of the boot-licking from the plebians, tech industry leaders talk about their employees and customers like they are completely beneath them, so called “NPCs” who are only there to fulfill the higher ambitions of the lords of the realm. They openly and publicly fantasize about educated women losing their jobs, teachers being eradicated, and doctors being replaced. They have become so powerful that their hubris has blinded them to the need to shut their mouths and pretend they care about us, the people who are ostensibly supposed to buy their products or work for them.
It is high time that the vast majority of us, the people, turn the tide on these arrogant, sociopathic parasites. They spend their billions trying to rig elections and corrupting the ability of elected officials to resist them and think they are invincible. Because of ideology, we have been conditioned to think there’s nothing that we can do about this, that regulating the tech industry is a violation of holy writ. It is not, it is the only way we will have the better future these supposed prophets falsely claim they are going to give us. I firmly believe it’s what the majority of this country wants, and there’s a crown lying in the gutter for any politician smart and brave enough to pick it up.