When the Cambridge Analytica scandal that surrounded Donald Trump’s election came to light, a lot of people raised questions and concerns over the power of big tech companies and the threat they were starting to pose. There was a realization that the anti-trust regulations that had been used to regulate monopolies and protect consumers in the past were not equipped to deal with the new ‘tech’ monopolies that were emerging.
However, conversations about big tech soon died down and it became another issue that started to exist on the periphery of everyone’s minds. In India however, tech giants have made moves to start establishing monopolies. The recent investments by Facebook and Google into Jio follow a trend of large investments that have seen Reliance Jio Platforms sell 32.84% of its stock for a combined Rs 1,52,055 crores (approximately $20.2 billion). This, coupled with Jio’s meteoric rise in Indian markets – its controls over 30% of market share less than 4 years after its public launch – begs the question of monitoring media giants in India. However, due to a lack of harms to consumers – Jio provides its telecom services at incredibly low rates – it has been hard to apply existing anti-trust laws.
But why do we even want to regulate a company if it seems to be providing high quality service at extremely low rates? One major reason of course is because of the threat that these companies pose once they become a monopoly – they can harm consumers by raising prices without the threat of other companies taking over their market share. In the case of tech monopolies however there are other more insidious threats when these corporations grow to become massive, they gain control to massive amounts of data on their customers. This threatens the privacy of billions of people who have no alternative but to use these sites. While the loss of privacy is bad enough on its own, this collection of big data and subsequent use also leads to bigger issues. There have already been incidents of corporations creating profiles of users and then using them in harmful ways. The biggest example of course was Cambridge Analytica’s creation of profiles on close to 70 million Americans which allowed the Trump campaign to create targeted messages to win their vote.
However, these companies also pose a much bigger threat – control over the information that reaches people. These worries are not unfounded – these corporations have already moved to limit net neutrality which prevents discrimination in terms of pricing and access for users on the internet. A recent violator of this was Jio itself when it blocked proxy sites that allow customers to browse the internet anonymously. The algorithms that determine the recommendations and search results that people receive – often the most common source of information for people – also have some innate biases. For example, a study by the Anti-Defamation League found that Youtube’s algorithm was funnelling violent and extremist alt-right content. This ability of these companies to control the flow of information to people gives them a dangerous ability to control narratives around issues without regulation.
At present, tech giants have massive influence in the US and Europe and are moving to spread across the world. Google and Facebook’s purchase of Jio stock show their attempts at establishing similar monopolies in developing countries. Until we find a way to regulate these, these corporations pose a threat to our privacy and our access to information that cannot be ignored.