| > And these cases are the utter majority. I think it's the opposite -- tech and politicians agree on the vast majority of things, but they're considered banal so the topic never comes up. But, you could imagine an alternate universe where tech did things differently, and then politicians wanted to regulate them. Here are some examples: * Tech companies offer most of their services for free. You could imagine a world where Google charged for searches and Facebook charged for posting, and so "poor people being excluded from the Internet" became a political issue. * Tech companies translate their services into a variety of languages. You could imagine a world where Google and Facebook were only available in English, and so "non-English-speakers being excluded from the Internet" became a political issue. * Tech companies don't allow anyone to view DMs, private posts, etc. except law enforcement. You could imagine a world where Google and Facebook had a culture where it was normal for employees to snoop on other peoples' DMs, and it became a political issue. * Conversely, you could imagine a world where tech companies refused to allow law enforcement access to peoples' DMs even with a valid warrant, and it became a political issue. (This is starting to happen.) * Tech companies allow anyone to post by default. You could imagine a world where tech companies only allowed people to post if tech companies liked their political views (similar to how newspapers' biases affect which editorials they publish) and it became a political issue. (This is starting to happen: the left is pressuring tech companies to restrict certain right-wing content, and the right is talking about regulation to force tech not to do that.) * Tech companies sometimes kick people off the platform for arbitrary procedural reasons, but not for personal pettiness reasons (with the notable exception of Elon Musk kicking people off Twitter). You could imagine a world where it was normal for e.g. Google to delete a journalist's GMail account if the journalist published something Google didn't like, and it becoming a political issue. * Tech companies often contribute to open-source standards and software. For example, Google is heavily involved in defining web standards; and they made Chromium open-source, allowing rivals like Microsoft to build on it. You could imagine a world where the tech ecosystem was much more fragmented and closed-source than it is today, and it becoming a political issue. This is what I was saying about a selection effect: You can easily think of ways that politicians want to regulate tech more, because those topics are controversial and make the news. But there are actually a ton of ways that tech _could_ be much worse than it is, but those topics never come up, so it takes some imagination to think of them. |