The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley

“this is not a balanced and academic book, but it does provide a vibrant narrative for those already skeptical of the tech industry.”

With the election of Donald Trump a real possibility in 2024, there are significant attempts to find someone to blame other than the Democratic Party and liberal elites over the last decade for putting in place policies half the electorate don’t seem to approve. And so, for many on the left, the culprit is clear: Big Tech: aka Silicon Valley letting anti-democratic voices sway the unwashed masses into voting for that Hitlerian aberration, Donald Trump.

The latest entry comes from former EU Parliamentarian Marietje Schaake, who now resides at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and holds that tech is unleashing “anti-democratic” forces. If one is inclined to be critical, or even simply skeptical of digital technology and the companies that bring it to us, this is the book for you. (Full disclosure I am president of a pro-technology think tank that receives funding form many of the companies that Schaake excoriates). For Schaake, democracy itself hangs in the balance unless democratic nations get their act together and follow the lead of the European Union and impose sweeping and stringent regulations and bans on the digital ecosystem.

It's as if she did a Google search (which I am sure she resented since it is Big Tech) to find every article of the last 15 years critical of tech companies—big and small, in virtually every country in the world from the United States to China to Israel. For example, she blames European telecom equipment maker Nokia for selling technology to Iranian telcos that would let the government monitor phone calls and text messages. How dare they.

There are only two problems. First, EU governments (as well as the US and other democracies) require such technology to be part of telephone systems in their own countries. And second, if Nokia did not provide this technology, Iran would simply buy its telecom equipment from China, reducing Western competitiveness and jobs in the industry. She criticizes tech companies for not providing end-to-end encryption on communications technologies, conveniently neglecting that many, like Facebook’s WhatsApp, already use this technology, and it is EU and US governments that are pressuring them not to.

She implies, with no data or citations, that tech platforms engage in virtually no content moderation, all so they can rake in the big bucks. The reality is otherwise. The major platforms spend billions on content moderation, including hiring content moderators and using AI to identify and sometimes take down posts. In the second half of 2020 alone, they took down almost 6 billion posts. In fact, the conservative critique of the platforms is that they take down too much.

She acknowledges that most platforms have content advisory boards, but asserts they are just window dressing. For example, she excoriates TikTok’s Content Advisory Board, saying that “little has been heard of the council” since it was established. Perhaps if she had reached out to TikTok, or to any of the members of the Board (of which I am one) she would have learned a different story. I can say that unless TikTok is one of the best companies at gaslighting its council members, it takes what we say extremely seriously and has acted on our recommendations many, many times.

Does America really want to live in an EU and UK world where the government decides to criminalize legal but objectionable speech? Many UK residents are now serving time in jail for using social media to express legal, but disfavored views, particularly about the immigration policies supported by the new Labor government. Schaake complains that the United Sates, and international bodies, have failed to force Facebook to censor content and that they are living above the law. No, they are complying with U.S. law- they take down illegal speech (such as child pornography) but because of Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, they do not have to take down legal speech that some people, presumably Schaake, object to.

The reality is that the United States has a tradition of free speech. Europe does not. In what world does the EU get to decide what content Americans cannot see online? She states “We must preserve democracy, and to do that, our governments must regain control over our society’s technological capabilities.” In other words, the government must censor speech it does not like. The book is filled with such stories, presented in a tone of moral superiority and outrage.

And of course, like most anti-Big Tech advocates, she must attack these companies for making money, especially money from ads. She conveniently fails to note that most of these services, like Twitter, Google Facebook, and others are free. But she attacks them by saying that “advertisers . . . are their main client.” Does she also attack AM and FM radio, free ad-supported local newspapers, and over-the-air TV because advertisers are their main clients? But she has a solution to all that by wanting governments to build their own “internet stack,” including presumably chips, servers, telecom, applications, and content. So, each country would have their own social media companies. What could possibly go wrong?

And no anti-digital book would be complete without misrepresenting facial recognition technology. She writes that two MIT researchers studied facial recognition accuracy and found it made errors. There was only one problem. They studied facial analysis technology, not facial recognition. The former are technologies like the aps you can use on your phone to guess your age. (Yes, they make errors (they get my age wrong, luckily five years younger than I am). But facial recognition technology—what you might now use to make it easier to get through the TSA line at the airport—is completely different, and according to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, many companies now sell the technology that has no statistical bias. Ah, but that’s a minor detail.

And she goes out of her way to twist actual statements to make the speakers look either naïve or craven. Case in point, she points of a Senate committee interchange when former Senator Oren Hatch (R-UT) asks Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg how it makes money when it doesn’t charge its customers. Zuckerberg responded, “We sell ads.” Ha ha, what an idiot Hatch might be. In fact, Senator Hatch offered up that question as a “softball” so that Zuckerberg could defend the use of targeted ads to raise revenue. He knew perfectly well how Facebook makes money.

To solve the digital menace, Schaake proposes much more expansive government rules and regulations. Knowing that people will respond that this will impose societal costs and limit innovation, she simply says no they will not; failing to cite multiple studies from European academics that laws like the EU privacy regulation (GDPR) has harmed tech startups.

Later she all but acknowledges that EU regulations impose costs, writing “companies sometimes feel that the EU consumer market is simply not worth the burden of complying with EU laws.” But wait, I am confused. I thought these were greedy, profit-hungry companies that would do anything to extract Euros. No, it turns out that EU regulations do have big cost. Her answer to that is to amazingly propose new legislation that would force these companies to continue to do business in the EU, even if they lose money.

In summary, this is not a balanced and academic book, but it does provide a vibrant narrative for those already skeptical of the tech industry.