ST_FacebookisEverywhere

G4 Opinion Special Section | | SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020 Consumers must raise their collective voice to remedy the harms from big tech mining their data PRIVACY By MARTA L. TELLADO One hundred and thirty years ago, at a time when corporate giants like Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Company stood poised to completely dominate whole industries, the U.S. Congress devised the first antitrust laws in modern history. The members’ intent was to protect American consumers — and the marketplace itself — from the harms and distortions that so often develop when a powerful company can block any serious rivals from competing for people’s business: higher prices, lower quality and laxer safety standards among them. Given how comprehensively corporations have evolved in the years since — from brick-and- mortar monoliths to complex digital ecosystems — you might expect our antitrust protections to have evolved in turn. But the truth is, those laws simply haven’t kept pace with our changing world. Not only has Congress been slow to update the rules over the last century, but our courts have also whittled down their effectiveness by choosing not to apply existing antitrust protections to the rapidly changing forms of corporate power over that span. The big harm of unchecked monopolies is no longer about one company owning all the steel in town — cutting quality and raising prices on customers who have no one else to buy it from. The harms, like the companies, have evolved dramatically over time. Giants like Facebook amass power not simply by accumulating wealth, but by accumulating insights into our behavior and gaining influence over our lives. Their currency is our personal and social data — which they collect, store, sell and use to filter the information we see and nudge us toward choices that benefit their interests. And Facebook hasn’t just topped that market. It has become the market — leaving a huge swath of people with nowhere else to go for many of the digital era’s most fundamental needs and experiences. No, it hasn’t raised the price of oil or tobacco. But it has caused harm. Having caught so much of America in its web, Facebook saturates our digital environment with threats to our privacy, paid content masquerading as news, and widening whirlpools of misinformation that suck us in, manipulate our thinking and degrade our civic health. Like Standard Oil, Facebook swallows up potential competitors — acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, for example — so that it can dominate one of the essential industries of the digital age: defining our reality, our connections and our time. Facebook throws its weight around, snuffing out whatever rivals it can’t purchase by strictly controlling access to its massive platforms and making it difficult for us to switch to rivals. The company doesn’t just steamroll smaller companies — it assimilates them, entangling its conquests to make it harder for government regulators to slow its growth. And without meaningful competition — and with an endless stream of data to soak up — Facebook has little incentive to maintain the quality of the product it offers. What was true in 1890 is also true today: No one company should have access to that magnitude of power. Just as the giants of the past were denied the chance to capture entire industries, we should not allow the giants of the present to monopolize the digital marketplace, our data or the information we rely on to make informed choices in our economy and our democracy. Consumers should raise their collective voice — and our government must act — to put responsible limits on the power that Facebook holds over our lives. Already, 6 in 10 Americans support stronger government guardrails for digital platforms. A House antitrust report released earlier this month cited a Consumer Reports survey finding that 79% of Americans “think that mergers and acquisitions pursued by large platforms are unfair because they undermine competition and limit consumer choice.” The same survey found that 3 out of 4 people worry about the amount of power wielded by the biggest tech platforms, including Facebook. The problem isn’t a lack of consensus — it’s a lack of action. What would that action look like? Our government could start by strengthening existing antitrust laws, funding the watchdogs that exist to enforce rules and hold companies like Facebook accountable and standing stronger against mergers that stifle competition and consumer choice. Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram should be retroactively reviewed: If it’s determined that their combination is impinging on a healthy, competitive marketplace, there should be changes to their current structure or some imposition of limits on their joint actions. We should pair stronger protections against anti- competitive behavior with new rules for a new economy: privacy laws that reflect the world we live in today, and rules that allow us — not Facebook — to control the flow of our data. Most of all, we as consumers need to speak up and insist to those in the halls of power that the digital marketplace evolves to serve our needs and interests — not the interests of corporate giants. We must raise our voices soon before the concrete dries, and Facebook cements its current position of digital dominance — and the very real harms that come with it — into the bedrock of our lives. Since it is our data, it is absolutely in our power to turn our concerns into action to further competition and fairness in our marketplace. Marta L. Tellado is president and CEO of Consumer Reports. By JESSICA J. GONZÁLEZ and TIMOTHY KARR While it’s no secret to anyone watching the stratospheric growth of Facebook and Google over the past decade, the recent congressional report on antitrust and the technology sector made it clear: We have a problem, and its name is Big Tech. The groundbreaking report, authored by House Judiciary Committee staff, details the abuses that occur when a handful of giant firms dominate almost every aspect of the online marketplace. “To put it simply,” the report reads, “companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.” Nowhere is this more evident than in the control that the two companies exert over online advertising. And the consequences have been devastating — not only to the news industry, which has seen its sources of revenue evaporate as advertisers have abandoned traditional placements in print, radio and television, but also to the sort of civil discourse that is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy. There’s a way out of this mess. But it requires actions that go beyond antitrust enforcement to include updating privacy laws to protect the civil rights of platform users, taxing online-advertising revenues to support independent journalism, and modifying these companies’ community standards to prevent the spread of hate and disinformation across their networks. Make privacy rights civil rights These tech companies make money by collecting our personal data and repackaging it for sale to the highest bidder. Facebook uses information about our likes, dislikes, friends and families to place ads in our feed that are designed to provoke a particular response. Google uses data about our online searches, browsing histories and offline locations to give advertisers a full-field view of user behavior and place targeted ads throughout our internet experience. Our data is the most valuable commodity these multibillion- dollar companies hold. And they wield it in ways that enable discrimination against people of color, women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, religious minorities, immigrants and other marginalized communities. A 2016 ProPublica investigation found that a Facebook ad-targeting tool allowed realtors to sift through our data and restrict who could see housing-related ads based on our “Ethnic Affinities.” Even though Facebook agreed in a 2019 settlement to fix this problem, the company still allows advertisers to manipulate these tools to accomplish similar discriminatory results. We must outlaw discrimination in the data economy. To that end, Free Press Action and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law created draft legislation and called on Congress to treat privacy rights as civil rights. We must have control over the ways our personal information is used, and prohibit any company from manipulating our data to build systems that disenfranchise and oppress. Impose a platform ad tax for journalism Since the launch of Facebook in 2004, the number of U.S. newspaper employees has dropped by more than half, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hundreds of newsrooms have folded altogether, and right now more than 1,000 communities are news deserts without any local-news outlets. Many factors have contributed to the news industry’s demise. Runaway newspaper consolidation has burdened many conglomerates with debts they can no longer repay, while venture capitalists have swooped in to purchase struggling local-news outlets, strip them of their assets, flip them and move on. The emergence of Facebook and Google, which have wielded their command of our data to control more than 60% of digital-ad revenues, has also undercut the industry. Traditional advertising once helped underwrite the production of news that people relied on to stay informed and participate in our democracy. But now online advertising is controlled by two companies that aren’t in the business of news. To restore this social contract, Free Press Action has proposed a tax on targeted online advertising to respond to the crisis in journalism and fund diverse, local and independent news and information. For example, an annual 2% tax of online enterprises of a certain scale would yield nearly $2 billion for a new and independent endowment to fund local-news projects of all types — bringing water to news deserts across the country. Change the terms and stop the spread of hate and disinformation Facebook has long known that its ad-driven business model amplifies divisive posts over friendlier fare. But the company, which prioritizes growth above all else, buried an internal report warning against dangerous uses of its advertising and engagement algorithms. As a result, the platform is now a megaphone for the spread of bigotry and disinformation. Recently, a local paramilitary group used Facebook event pages to urge people to arm themselves against racial-justice protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Facebook’s engagement algorithms pushed this call to arms into the feeds of thousands of users, despite it being flagged as harmful 455 times. It was only after an armed man killed two protesters in Kenosha that Facebook admitted to a so-called “operational mistake.” With our allies in the Change the Terms and Stop Hate for Profit coalitions, Free Press has crafted policy changes that online platforms should adopt to curb the spread of toxic and hateful activities online. These include reining in algorithms that recommend or amplify content from groups associated with hate, disinformation or conspiracies. Many platforms have already adopted some of these policies. But others, including Facebook and Google-owned YouTube, have ignored most of our recommendations. We struggle every day to convince their executives to stop profiting from hate and disinformation, to rewire the technology that drives their dominance of the multibillion- dollar advertising marketplace. Their obligation to users’ health and safety must be greater than that. Congress’ antitrust report offers sobering evidence of the scale and dominance of these tech giants. But antitrust enforcement is just one piece of a patchwork of actions our country must take to rein in their power and protect everyone from groups associated with hate, disinformation or conspiracies. Jessica J. González is co-CEO of Free Press and co-founder of the Change the Terms coalition. Timothy Karr is Free Press’ senior director of strategy and communications. Going beyond antitrust to rein in Facebook and Google BARRIERS TO ENTRY Facebook has long known that its ad-driven business model amplifies divisive posts over friendlier fare.