Internet firms face a global techlash

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

> https://www.economist.com/news/international/21726072-though-big-tech-firms-are-thriving-they-are-facing-more-scrutiny-ever-internet-firms
>  
> <https://www.economist.com/news/international/21726072-though-big-tech-firms-are-thriving-they-are-facing-more-scrutiny-ever-internet-firms>
>
> Internet firms face a global techlash
>
> Though big tech firms are thriving, they are facing more scrutiny than ever
>
> 7 hours ago
> Though big tech firms are thriving, they are facing more scrutiny than ever
>
> HOW much bigger can they get? The five biggest technology firms—Alphabet (Google’s parent), Amazon, Apple, Facebook 
> and Microsoft—have published financial results in recent weeks that put their combined quarterly revenues at $143bn. 
> Yet this rude financial health conceals a more troubling long-term trend: governments, long willing to let internet 
> firms act as they wish, are increasingly trying to tie them down.
>
> This goes far beyond the latest row over sexism and tolerance of diverse political viewpoints in Silicon Valley, 
> sparked by a memo written by a Google employee (see article 
> <http://www.economist.com/news/business/21726078-sacked-james-damore-has-become-hero-alt-right-google-employee-inflames-debate-about>).
>  Scarcely a week passes without a sign of the shift in attitudes. On August 1st Amber Rudd, Britain’s home secretary, 
> warned that unless the firms did more to block extremist content from their platforms, they would be forced to do so 
> by new laws. Stephen Bannon, the chief strategist at the White House, reportedly wants to regulate Facebook and 
> Google as utilities. Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, has talked of taking action against Amazon because it 
> allegedly does not pay its fair share of tax.
> Under pressure from the Chinese government, Apple removed several “virtual private networks” (VPNs)—services that 
> enable users to bypass China’s censorship apparatus—from its local app store. In June Canada’s Supreme Court ordered 
> Google to stop its search engine returning a result advertising a product that infringed on a firm’s intellectual 
> property. And on August 9th it emerged that the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which preserves old versions of 
> edited web pages, has been blocked in India, apparently by order of the department of telecommunications.
>
> The examples vary, but they amount to a significant change in the regulatory environment. When the internet went 
> mainstream in the late 1990s, tech firms and most democratic governments embraced its global nature. Firms operated 
> largely free from onerous rules (blocking pornography featuring children has been the main exception).
>
> One reason is technological. It has become easier to enforce borders in cyberspace. Tools that use “IP addresses”, 
> the numbers that identify internet connections, have become much better at enabling online firms and regulators to 
> work out where users are. The shift to smartphones has increased governments’ power. App stores have local links, for 
> example to payment services, which make it easier to monitor and control users’ activity…..
>
> …..



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