The new “digital revolution” has made a huge difference in almost every area of life. It is undisputed that the internet has become the newest forum for the public. We obtain and consume information differently, our news and content consumption habits have changed. These changes are driven, catalysed and supervised by the global tech companies, since they determine what and how the average internet user can reach. We can access the internet and information reaches us through these companies, they are the intermediaries between the user and the content creator.
A decade ago, nobody thought that not just social media platforms would become the centre of our world, but our profiles would become the mould of our offline self. At the dawn of social networking, even the service providers themselves have addressed very few privacy issues, but by now the dangers of having too much information about us on an online platform have become clear. The more we use these pages for sharing, the more our followers and platform operators will learn about us. This is the first step that leads to the collapse of the walls of our private sphere.
Defining what is private information and what is not has today become much more difficult, since on social media, you are only interesting if you are publishing personal content. While oversharing itself may cause many problems, we cannot accuse users publishing too much content, doing what social media has been created for: sharing our inner selves with others. However, even a conscious user cannot say with certainty whether the data he or she is sharing is safe or not, for which the platform is responsible.
Every social media site collects and sells our most intimate and private information daily, and we have no way of knowing what companies do with our data. An entire industry has been created to buy and sell our data. It is not even necessary to be present on a social media site for a platform or data broker company to have personal information linked to us, since our friends are leaving clues about us. Therefore, even if we decide to delete our account, our profile could still be compiled from previous interactions with our friends or other pages. When platforms collect so much data in so many ways, it raises the question of why we are continuing to trust or use them at all. The answer is that if we do not want to miss out, we do not really have a choice.
The operator of a social networking site can determine the rules by which it operates its own interface, and registrants have two options: they either accept these rules or do not register on the site at all. The only regulations from governments that social media sites need to follow are generalised around personal information.
The relationship between users and platforms is governed by a contract that everyone signs when they register. Another important element in protecting users from platforms is the GDPR, which has brought improvements compared to the previous regulation. The GDPR is generally intended to ensure that data on EU citizens can only be processed on the territory of states where compliance with the criteria system stated by the GDPR is granted.
There can be no perfect control or regulation, as technology will always be at least one step ahead. The regulation must strive to guarantee and protect the rights of users as broadly as possible. It is no longer a privilege for the states to set the boundaries of freedom of expression and to oversee it, as it has already been done by global players who extend their own code of free speech to all parts of the world. The European Commission plans to begin their work on a new set of rules that will be design to change the way the EU treats tech companies.
Author: János Tamás Papp
https://ajtk.hu/en/research/in-focus/online-2020-1-in-focus-tech-companies-the-new-sovereigns