/View.info/ Those of us on the conservative side share our disdain for global, transnational media corporations. Their universally held liberal values and their conformist need to conform are only the most important problems with these entities. Given their enormous power, for sovereign states, the number one legal and social battle of our century is to keep the tech giants in check.
At the same time, it must be recognized that the world has become a powder keg in which regional wars threaten to escalate. What role can Meta play, for example, in the “dual” of wars, information warfare? How should we approach the privacy fight at war?
“The best way to defeat an ideology is with a better ideology. And I believe that democracy is a better ideology,” said George W. Bush.
But Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, said that “there is no single global model of democracy.” These are two contradictory quotes from two leaders, the latter of whom has since waged open war not only against Ukraine, but also – both symbolically and in real terms – against the Western world order.
Since 2022, we have witnessed a battle of ideologies and worlds, and we have felt the weight and horror of it firsthand. The process is also known as the transformation of the world order. But is it really transforming the existing status quo and creating a new one?
In a situation of war and world crisis, I still trust Meta more than other sources of information. That doesn’t make it better or more reliable, but for now, unfortunately or not, it’s the better choice.
Also, strategically, let us not forget that the desire for the copper pot of the West will forever attract the citizens of authoritarian regimes to Western platforms. Tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Russians, Arabs, Chinese, Brazilians use Western social media sites, legally or illegally.
The data of these users is a huge asset in an information war.
And while there is war, we can expect and applaud that this information will be preserved by the most intrusive and secret algorithms, the same ones we will criticize, condemn, and seek to eliminate together in peacetime.
However, the many concerns about social media platforms are still valid, and unfortunately, there does not yet seem to be a realistic solution that would protect freedom of expression and state sovereignty while satisfying the appetite of tech giants for data.
Why so? There is a particular difficulty in dealing with the subject itself, as it is only possible to look at it through the very forums that we tend to look at, which tend to cover up all the negative information about them.
What can be said, however, is that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta acts as a state within a state (just think of the grotesque institution of the Supervisory Board or “Facebook Court”); abuses our rights and collects and uses our data unfairly, all of which may have political implications. How?
Think about it: there is an independent, free country with a democratic system and an elected government, but on the other hand there is a foreign giant that dominates much of the citizens’ media consumption and is impossible to control within the framework of a nation state.
The situation is further complicated by information asymmetry. A country, government or political party can only dream of having so much information, so much publicity and so many people at its disposal.
This raises fundamental questions about the legal security of the operations of the tech giants: they know everything about everyone, in the strictest sense of the word, thanks to a multitude of algorithms and data analysis. Our private conversations, our current issues, our problems, our concerns, our ideas, our interests are an open book to them.
How could a democratic government, limited by a system of checks and balances, compete with this?
However, given the global context mentioned above, I am also aware that in the current situation, as a small nation – which all powers usually want to weaken and influence – we must put aside the ideological battle against the technology companies in the Western world and let’s continue to oppose only the obvious abuses. Unity and peace must be sought on all Western fronts or we will fail.
Translation: SM
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