It felt like the moment Frances Haugen, a Facebook whistleblower, appeared before Congress last Wednesday was a turning point. Haugen's testimony caused a crisis for a company that, until recently, seemed unregulated and unlikely to be dismantled. While scandals like this have caused a lot of attention, they have not resulted in any meaningful changes. If history is any guide, however, it is likely that the tide will turn.
Haugen revealed internal documents that showed that the company knew of the dangers of its products. She stated that she would rather fix than destroy Facebook. But these are only two options. Regulation, which is the third option, is not about fixing up dangerous companies or their products, but about changing the social, economic, and business environment that allowed them unchecked to become rapacious and destructive entities. It stops the harms done by the current companies and ensures that no new companies can take their place or continue to operate with the same destructive business models. It is important to remember that the US has a long history of regulating new technologies. This long lead-up has almost always been a part of it.
We need to examine the striking similarities between previous regulatory battles and today's. This will help us understand where Facebook will land. There was Big Tech before there was Big Tech. The Big Three were Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, and General Motors. A famous memo made it clear that strong regulation was not an option but a necessity. It may be hard to see the parallels between Big Tech and the US automotive industry of the mid-20th Century, which once seemed unstoppable.
The US government has a long history in regulating new technologies for consumer safety, from communications technology like phones to energy technologies like oils to transport technologies like cars. Each case was viewed initially as an excuse for ignoring regulation because of the difficulty in regulating these industries due to their interdependence with the nation's functioning. It seemed impossible at first to think that coal burning could be subjected to laws or that meaningful efforts could be made stop corporations from dumping industrial pollutants into rivers. Destructive industries are often ruled over by powerful and wealthy companies. They have been allowed to continue unassisted because it would be too difficult to stop them.
The historical cycle ends at a point when the damage done rises to the level of a political or social crisis.
Because once technology systems have become so deeply embedded that they can cause significant, widespread political and social damage, they also have already become critical infrastructures that are widely used enough to make their total removal as detrimental as their continued use. Each of these industries seemed unshakeable. The newness of the technology at the time meant that regulation would be impossible to delay and regulators would not be well-informed. Each of these industries eventually faced regulation. Often, individual companies were forced to dissolve because the historical cycle saw the severity of the damage being done rise to the point of a political or social crisis.
Facebook is an example of this. The novelty of the internet economy protected it as a company, product, and from the same type of consumer complaints, litigation, corporate responsibility, and corporate liability that plagued older technology companies making tangible goods like computers and cars for years. In 2016, Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook executive, wrote that the loss of life was worth the company's growth. The company appeared to be unaffected. Sophie Zhang, a whistleblower, gathered evidence of political manipulation and destructive use on the platform. As the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out, Facebook's leaders seemed largely invulnerable. Calls to regulate Facebook appeared half-hearted and unlikely that they would succeed in the US. It was almost impossible to call for the company's release from its grip on the information landscape in many other countries. The possibility of dissolving the company and its assets, which in a clever move of horizontal integration online include WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus, seemed unlikely to most technology commentators.
