Commentary - The Hostage-Taking Crisis of the Tech Industry
For decades, society has faced ongoing challenges to regulate tech companies and their leaders. Frequently governments have been extremely timid toward actually taking material action against them, advocacy groups vehemently defend them and their users act like you're taking away their livelihoods. I feel this is because they have in effect taken society hostage.
A lot of "innovators" come in claiming that they want to help people. Either to help you communicate more effectively with others, or to reach more people with your creations, to find information more effectively, or to build communities, to provide you internet services that bypass local monopolies, to enable people to trade services such as ridesharing, delivery or places to overcome normal establishment, and many, many, many more.
Their help is almost always offered at a fair looking price if not free of financial cost. It appears to have no strings attached. In a vulnerable world where a lot of people do need a leg up, especially to compete to get jobs, or that their time is strained so they need to be more efficient, or that they've been under existing exploitation, this help is very inviting. Many people rush to accept the help.
Herein is where things go wrong. Adoption outpaces any kind of social process and safeguards to really understand what's going on and who is offering this help. Once enough of society adopts their services and they become integrated, they enjoy significant private power over society. Their private resources sit in key important positions. They dictate the terms under which society continues receiving what is provided, which makes it difficult for society to really prevent and protect themselves from abuse.
These powerful actors do engage in abuse. They require society to hand over significant amounts of social power to them, including to freely manipulate society to their private whims. They modify agreements to make the costs to your privacy unlimited as a condition to use their services (in what correct economic system can a price be unlimited?). They force the public to accept situations where predators are sharing the same platforms as vulnerable groups because smaller community-run services no longer exist. They require society accept their psychological manipulation through uncontrolled, malicious advertising. They force people into inhumane work conditions.
If society tries instituting regulations upon them, they claim that it's an unreasonable imposition given their "help" and make implicit threats that they'll have to pull the plug. Once integrated, the theoretical loss associated with losing their services is too great, so society becomes captured in something of a Stockholm syndrome and commits significant resources to shooting down any attempts to control the dangers they bring. This includes free speech groups that defend tech companies in the interests of free speech while the same companies harm free speech.
This same theoretical loss also actively prevents anyone from walking away from their "help". Walking away can mean losing contact with support networks or becoming a social pariah and unable to participate in certain social circles. It can also mean losing a lot of networking to get jobs in an era where getting them can be difficult.
Overall, people become hostages, where by it's exceedingly hard to regulate these powerful actors.