Senator Al Franken has been a proponent of a free and open internet for years, but Thursday, he decided to publish an op-ed in The Guardian that made a case for expanding our already threatened net neutrality rules into the realm of other big tech companies like Facebook and Google. The reasoning is not simply their size but their vast control over personal data and the very real potential they have in our country’s distribution of any and all forms of “information.” The op-ed comes shortly after a Senate committee—which Sen. Franken sat on—finished talking with big tech companies like Facebook about how and what happened with real and false information purveyed on their sites during this past election cycle. A set of committee hearings that did not give much confidence to either the public or the men and women asking the questions. Sen. Franken says as much in the op-ed.
Last week’s hearings demonstrated that these companies may not be up to the challenge that they’ve created for themselves. In some instances, it seems that they’ve failed to take commonsense precautions to prevent the spread of propaganda, misinformation, and hate speech. [...]
Before I move on, I want to be very clear about something. In my view, the size of these companies is not – in isolation – the problem. But I am extremely concerned about these platforms’ use of Americans’ personal information to further solidify their market power and consequently extract unfair conditions from the content creators and innovators that rely on their platforms to reach consumers.
As with our banks and our financial institutions, the too big to give a hoot about anything but bottom lines has once again revealed itself to be both hurtful to our democracy and the breeding ground of dubious ethical business practices. As Sen. Franken runs through the big business of advertising revenue for companies like Facebook and Google, and the fact that social media is an almost essential presence in most Americans’ lives, he comes to one undeniable point: these revenues and the methods they have been achieved by have clearly been used for nefarious purposes. Who is to blame for this? Big tech companies hide behind the mathematics of their “algorithms” to explain how they couldn’t have known, didn’t see something until it was too late, were too busy buying a mega-yacht to care. But as Franken points out, these companies cannot have it both ways. On the one hand they are telling everyone how advanced and granular the sophistication of their algorithmic models are, while at the other time pretending that the size of their operation make them “clumsy” in these cases.