The Gilded Age of Digital Monopolies

Context: Unlike many parts of the world where a consensus has emerged that the unrestrained dominance of digital monopolies is terrible for humankind, the Indian government has chosen to go rather soft.

Dark Side of Digital Monopolies

• Overwhelming dominance over online search: (by Google) has been used to pilfer other companies’ content for its own results and starve its competitors of vital traffic.
  • In the US, recently a third anti-trust suit in two months was filed by 38 attorneys general against Google-the Internet giant.
• Unprecedented dependence: over the powerful provider of services like electronic mail, search engines, location maps and payment, besides creating and viewing audio-visual content.
  • Our unprecedented dependence on two of the biggest global corporate groups was underlined on December 14 when many of Google’s services, including Gmail, collapsed for around 45 minutes.
• A huge share of ‘tech’ giants’ revenue lies in digital advertising: which is over 90% without contributing anything for research, news-gathering, design services and staff salaries.
  • In the US, Facebook and Google together account for 90% and 95% of total advertising revenue
  • Facebook and Google are contending that they are technology companies and not media companies/publishers, despite evidence that more individuals are using these platforms to access every kind of information.
  • On December 9, the Australian government tabled legislation that could compel Google and Facebook to pay media organisations for distributing their content on their search engines.
• Anti-competitive and monopolistic conduct: The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) argued that Facebook’s conduct was anti-competitive and aimed at entrenching and maintaining its monopoly.
• Threat to human nature:
  • Two documentaries on Netflix — The Great Hack and The Social Dilemma on the addictive and deleterious effects of social media;
  • book by Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power have extensively documented and analysed how “a global system of behaviour modification” is threatening human nature in the 21st century just as industrial capitalism did in the previous century.

Impact on India

• Nurtured hate speech: incendiary content and disinformation on the digital platforms have been used to further interests of the ruling regime.
• Promoted profit-maximising business model: by making content viral irrespective of whether the information is true or false, hateful or benign.

Conclusion: The Internet no longer democratises and empowers; instead, it intrudes into our lives and manipulates our thoughts and behaviour.