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What Can Be Done About Big Tech?

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What Can Be Done About Big Tech? TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 GLOSSARY................................................................................................................... 2 SECTION 1: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES ARE THE NEW CORPORATE GIANTS.............................. 3 1. Microsoft............................................................................................................ 4 2. Apple................................................................................................................ 5 3. Amazon.............................................................................................................. 5 4. Alphabet............................................................................................................ 6 5. Facebook............................................................................................................ 7 6. Alibaba.............................................................................................................. 8 7. Tencent.............................................................................................................. 8 SECTION 2: THE RISE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY HAS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION OF VALUE.................................................................................................. 9 1. The united states dominates big tech, followed by china................................................... 9 2. The asia-pacific region faces a digital divide................................................................. 10 3. What does this mean for the global distribution of value?.................................................. 12 SECTION 3: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES WIELD DATA AND INFRASTRUCTURE POWER TO EXERT ECONOMIC CONTROL....................................................................................................... 14 SECTION 4: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES AND SPECULATIVE FINANCE ENABLE EACH OTHER............ 17 SECTION 5: WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT BIG TECH?................................................................... 19 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................ 22 END NOTES................................................................................................................ 23 AUTHOR: Jai Vipra* DESIGN: roy+arati design PUBLISHED BY: Focus on the Global South, January 2021 Focus on the Global South is an activist think tank based in Asia providing analysis and building alternatives for just social, economic and political change. Contents of the report may be quoted or reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the source of information is properly cited. Please note that for some images the copyright may lie elsewhere and copyright conditions of those images should be based on the copyright terms of the original source. *Jai Vipra is a technology policy researcher focusing on digital platforms in the Global South. INTRODUCTION Digital technologies feature in the most visible and powerful innovations that have occurred in the last few decades. Yet these new technologies preside over a world that is still partly mired in the old. The old world represents not only a lack of access to connectivity, smartphones or knowledge, but the conditions of staggering inequality and exploitation at a global scale. This is not to say that digital technologies have had no effect on the economy – in fact, they have led to a reorganisation of the world economy such that digital technology giants now sit at the helm of global value chains. In interaction with national policies, they have created the remarkable situation where corporations from the United States dominate in these technologies, challenged only by those in China. It thus becomes important for progressive actors What is clear is that the concentration of data to map the growth of digital technology through in a few hands means that information is not the companies that have risen through the freely available in the market, assuring an application of such technology. These companies unfair and self-replicating advantage for the are now colloquially known as Big Tech. Big Tech Big Tech companies at the expense of newer derives its influence from the centrality of data to or smaller players. Big Tech players can offer the new technologies, and their exclusive control deep discounts to users that smaller players over large troves of data generated by their cannot afford, and supply useful data to their users. Big Tech has also achieved scale through subsidiaries that competitors cannot access. They its platform nature, which reinforces its data can buy out start-ups to acquire new technology capturing and use capabilities. and to make sure competitors do not emerge. These capabilities are allowing Big Tech Through their influence within the US government companies’ value and influence to soar. By using and the World Trade Organization, many Big their users’ data for targeting, Google and Tech companies have succeeded in staving off Facebook have become the recipients of 65% regulations that would even the playing field and of digital advertising spending globally. Personal give consumers more control over their digital data has also been used by financial institutions futures. to predict loan repayments and by governments to predict where child welfare interventions will be As entire economies digitalise, they face a needed, raising fears of “rule by algorithm”. choice: whether to allow this digitalisation, and consequently the entire economic arrangement, Big Tech companies are heavily incentivised to to be carried out on the terms of Big Tech, or collect as much personal data as possible. The whether to develop democratic alternatives. more data you have, the better your algorithms; Democratic alternatives can range from and the better your algorithms, the better you regulations for privacy, competition, and taxation can attract more advertisers and users, who then to public participation, ownership, and control. generate more data. Years of experience collecting and managing this data have equipped a few Big This brief will provide company profiles of the Tech companies, including Microsoft and Amazon, largest digital technology companies, explain how to pivot to providing cloud and computing services they wield economic control, and discuss some to other organisations, from other companies to of the regulatory actions and proposals that government agencies like the Pentagon and the are available to progressive actors worldwide, CIA. The degree to which Big Tech firms use the especially in Asia-Pacific. Also included is a data they store for other entities for their own glossary of key terms. benefit remains an open question. GLOSSARY Artificial intelligence (AI) technological and social means to collect very large datasets very frequently, allowing us to make The definition of artificial intelligence changes correlations, predict changes, and affect behaviour. as does our understanding of what is artificial For example, how you like pictures or scroll on and what is intelligent. For the purposes of this Instagram contains clues about the content or document, we can understand artificial intelligence products you like, helping advertisers understand as a group of technologies that use digital data whether they should spend money on advertising to to make decisions at high levels of autonomy. One you or not. way of achieving artificial intelligence is through machine learning algorithms. An image recognition Enterprise Software or Enterprise Solutions example might help to understand how certain Enterprise software is software for (usually large) machine learning algorithms are different from organisations. This software helps organisations other simpler algorithms. Normally, we would tell manage business processes, plan for resources, our software that a baby is small, has two hands organise content, manage customer relationships and two feet, and is often crawling, and then hope and supply chains, and streamline administrative that the software learns to recognise when a picture functions. Common examples of enterprise software has a baby. Instead, a machine learning algorithm are Salesforce and Google Analytics. allows us to simply show the software millions of pictures of babies, through which it identifies by Platform itself what babies look like. When we show it a new A platform facilitates interactions among two or picture, AI will be able to tell us if the picture has a more groups of actors, such as buyers, sellers, users, baby in it. software developers, researchers, and financiers. In a more generalised form: to code a certain type For example, Amazon is a platform that facilitates of machine learning algorithm, instead of telling interaction among buyers, sellers, logistics providers, the software to “do x, y and then z”, we can tell and financiers (e.g., for purchases made using it to “achieve x result” and feed it troves of data monthly instalment payments). Platforms are often so it can identify patterns and figure out ways of referred to as multi-sided markets – the sides being achieving the result by itself. the different actors. As we shall see in this paper, the nature of platforms is often infrastructural. Cloud Venture Capital Servers are computers that provide various functions to other computers in a network. These Private equity
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