As Amazon turns 25, let’s call time on the tech oligarchy and their dystopian ‘disruptions’ to our lives
Lurking in the shadows of a quarter century of change is the uncomfortable reality that government is struggling to keep up
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Your support makes all the difference.Twenty-five years ago today, a man called Jeff founded an online marketplace for books. Since then, Amazon’s scale and influence has grown faster than anyone could have expected at the time.
When we think about Amazon today, most of us are familiar with the convenient online shopping, the quick deliveries, maybe the streaming service.
But Amazon, like other online platforms, has become much more than a platform. Through a range of products – from Alexa to doorbell cameras – they’re now listening in our living rooms and watching from our front doors.
Amazon isn’t just a website we choose to access; it’s a huge range of products, services and logistics networks.
The firm’s courier network is growing, and it’s reported they will have around 70 Boeing airliners in the US by 2021 – and they’re looking to hire someone in the UK to rapidly roll out their shipping network and delivery supply chain here.
These momentous changes are happening across other platforms too. Facebook recently announced it’s looking to launch its own currency.
Not all these things are bad; some disruptions are good. But some are truly terrifying. And lurking in the shadow of these examples of dramatic change over the past 25 years is the uncomfortable reality that government is struggling to keep up.
The way we think about online platforms has not kept pace with reality. The digital world is not somehow separate from our own. Just look at the workers in Amazon’s Swansea factory who say they’re treated like robots, under so much pressure they feel dehumanised.
All too often we allow tech giants to brand themselves as start-ups despite their multibillion pound profits and backers.
For too long their PR people have framed them as the underdog, failing to recognise the reality that they are now the giant oligarchs of global capitalism.
A decade ago I was a digital utopian. I believed in a digital future where the internet would allow us to access all the world’s knowledge in a few clicks and would lead to a level of human flourishing never seen before.
The reality is not so much disappointing as dystopian. We now have terrorists live-streaming massacres on digital platforms. Algorithms are sending child users into a rabbit warren of content about suicide and self-harm. Elections are being influenced and even infiltrated by dark online political adverts paid for overseas. Conversations had in the privacy of our own homes are being recorded by Alexa and listened to by anonymous Amazon employees far away across the globe.
The government has announced an attempt to regulate these online harms and bring the tech giants into line. The ultimate sanction proposed in the new internet regulation is the ability to block certain websites that contain harmful content or behave irresponsibly. Yet now, new browser software is being rolled out so that internet providers like BT and virgin won’t be able to tell which websites are being visited, which means they won’t be able to block those dangerous and rogue sites.
The truth is these huge tech companies think they are too big, too international and too clever to be brought under control.
The Facebook empire, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram, is a communications network rivalling the biggest traditional telecoms providers. We designated telecoms infrastructure a utility and we regulated it carefully to ensure competition, consumer protection and value for money. Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram can do what they like and are about to merge the code, creating a single messaging service across all three platforms.
Labour has said before – we’ve got to deal with the harms, hate speech and fake news that festers online, but fundamentally we’ve got to deal with a broken and distorted digital market that is dominated by these tech giants. We need a regulator to look at whether they are monopolies and think about how we could break them up if that’s what’s needed. This week the Competition and Markets Authority announced it will do just that. That’s the kind of leadership we need to see from regulators.
It sends out the message that it’s time the tech giants heard loud and clear: the age of unaccountability is over.
Tom Watson is deputy leader of the Labour Party and MP for West Bromwich East
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