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Amid its growing power, big tech confronts calls for regulation and accountability
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In baseball, when a player rises from the minor leagues and earns a spot with a major club, it’s called “going to The Show” and it’s cause for great celebration. Tech’s turn in the batter’s box for “The Show” has not so fun.
A number of tech companies that began as startups with innovative ideas have emerged to become global powerhouses and many are now learning that life in the major leagues of business can be rough.
Such was the case with Twitter Inc., for example, which found itself confronted with a decision in January to impose a permanent ban on the most powerful leader in the free world from its microblogging site. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who left the company for a period of time and then returned in 2017, found himself wrestling with the decision earlier this year after supporters of President Donald J. Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Timo Lenzen
When rioters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, social media platforms could no longer deny their role in undermining democracy. Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the risk of allowing Donald Trump’s continued access to Facebook was “too great” after the then-US president appeared to be egging on the insurgents via his social media accounts. Twitter acknowledged that Trump’s tweets could “inspire others to replicate the violent acts” against the heart of US democracy.
But Trump is not the only authoritarian leader abusing social media, and America is not the only country to suffer from it. Variations of this story are playing out in the Philippines, Cameroon, Libya and a dozen other countries that rarely hit the headlines.
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