As the 21st-century society is struggling to be at pace with the technological innovations that are currently happening at breakneck speed, governments from all over the globe have realized that our internet economy is undertaxed and unaccountable. For instance, the tech giant Google is undergoing investigation from the European Union for abuse of its dominant position in the search engine market. Germany is also investigating Facebook on how it makes astronomic profits from user data. The United States is probing Apple on whether it led to the slowing down of older iPhones by allegedly coming up with harmful software updates.
Moreover, the use of social media to disrupt the 2016 presidential election in the US is subject to a Congressional hearing. Tech giants could easily find themselves in a position where they are being investigated and regulated with the increased scrutiny over claims of malicious players buying ads, fake news, and disinformation. This is set to happen in the big tech backlash that has currently taken Silicon Valley by storm. There are also concerns by consumers on whether mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets which are engineered to give us an online presence are just a wealth making a program for tech and social media companies at the expense of the mental health of children.
The Chief investment officer at GBH Insights has said that since the fake news and the meddling of the 2016 US presidential election by Kremlin, we have experienced a lot of heat, not Alphabet, Twitter and Facebook not just in the halls of Washington but also in the European Union and far-flung countries of the world. Anyone who has been keen to observe the trends in social media platforms such as Alpha, YouTube, and Twitter, they have been more stringent and on their concentration of particular content on what is given to users worldwide.
For instance, Facebook has recently changed its logic and code for news feed to show communication from family and friends as compared to what transpired in the past where you could be able to access news from across the globe. This has been as a result of lawsuits and legal battles where both users and the government want more accountability and integrity in the world of social media. Regulators from the European Union are also passing strict regulations for these tech companies to follow to have access to the wide and affluent European market.
