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[...] tech companies are under fire for creating problems instead of solving them. At the top of the list is Russian interference in last year's presidential election. Social media might have originally promised liberation, but it proved an even more useful tool for stoking anger. The manipulation was so efficient and so lacking in transparency that the companies themselves barely noticed it was happening.
The election is far from the only area of concern. Tech companies have accrued a tremendous amount of power and influence. Amazon determines how people shop, Google how they acquire knowledge, Facebook how they communicate. All of them are making decisions about who gets a digital megaphone and who should be unplugged from the web.
Their amount of concentrated authority resembles the divine right of kings, and is sparking a backlash that is still gathering force.
Is it that the tech companies are creating problems for society as a whole, or merely disrupting the status quo for the old Powers-That-Be?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday October 14 2017, @07:03PM
Money is survival, then it is comfort, then power over your own life, then power over other people's lives.
Corporations generally start at the power over other people's lives level, then work their way up from there: shaping laws and policies to their own benefit, first locally, then moving on to globally and beyond, if your initials are EM.
No entity on this planet accumulates $100B in liquid assets without starting to exert power over communication and culture. It's called advertising, which starts as educating people about your product, moves on to influencing them to purchase it, and continues through influencing the culture to influence as many people as possible to purchase the product(s) - see above about shaping laws and policies in a coordinated effort to this end.
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