Headline Dec. 07/ ''' THESE TECHNOLOGY GIANTS '''

''' THESE TECHNOLOGY GIANTS '''

TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES have acquired  a tremendous amount of power and  influence.

Amazon determines how people shop, Google how they acquire knowledge, Facebook  how they communicate. All of them are making decisions about who gets- A digital megaphone and who should be unplugged from the web.    

The concentration of authority resembles the divine rights of things and creating a backlash that is still gathering force.

''For 10 years, the arguments in tech were about which chief executive was more like Jesus. Which one was going to run for president. Who did the best job convincing the work force to lean in,'' said Scott Galloway, a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business.

''Now sentiments are shifting. The worm has turned.'' 

News is dripping out of Facebook, Twitter and now Google about how their advertising and publishing systems were harnessed by the Russians during the 2016 elections.

But are these tech giants too big to regulate?

Facebook recently disclosed that it believed Russian state actors purchased political ads during the  2016 election' more broadly, it had been accused of allowing disinformation and misinformation to thrive on its platform.

Among the measures that Mr. Zuckerberg said his company would take included expanding  ''partnerships'' with election commissions around the world and-

''Working proactively to strengthen the democratic process.'' Most striking, coming from the chief executive of a publicly traded American social-media company, was this line.:

''We have been working to ensure that the integrity of the German elections this weekend.''

Social-media companies are not new to defending themselves in ideological terms -they're just not used to doing it on their home turf.

While to authoritarian regimes, the threat of social media is obvious, in the United States, Facebook, Twitter and Google have for years talked about themselves freely in the language of democracy, participation and connectivity.

The emerging tension between internet platforms and democratic governments, however, seems to stem less from their obvious rhetoric differences than from their similarities.

Facebook's transition from confident stride to a guarded crouch was conspicuous and sudden arriving roughly at the same time as President Trump.

Shortly, after the 2016 American elections, Mr. Zuckerberg dismissed heated claims that  misinformation on his platform had gotten Mr. Trump elected as a ''pretty crazy idea.''

In September, he admitted that his comment was dismissive, but did so after months of near-constant scrutiny, including, according to The Washington Post, a post-election lecture from President Obama.

In an interview with Bloomberg published in September, he sounded more wishful than irritated :

''For most of the existence of the company, this idea of connecting the world has not been a controversial thing,'' he said.

''Something changed.'' It certainly had : Facebook was being implicated as potentially harmful to the systems within which it had thrived, and with which it had sought to identify itself.

The problem was that  Facebook  had outgrown every context except its own. Though it neither thinks like nor  resembles a government, it has effectively sewn itself into the fabric of  user's  public and personal lives.

Facebook accounts have now become something like IDs, enabling an ever-growing range of activities : commerce, job-seeking, leisure.

Networks stand in for community; encryption, in owned and operated services like WhatsApp, stands in for guarantees of liberty; newsfeeds become sources of diverse information, including ads, yes, but also calls to register to vote -to apply elsewhere what you've experienced online.

All this  is to say that a sufficiently successful social platform is experienced, much like Uber, as a piece of infrastructure. 

Except, instead of wrapping its marketplace around a city's road. Facebook makes a new market around communication, media and civil society.

But this cultural metastasis has led to a swift and less-than-discriminate backlash. Already, calls for regulating the largest internet platforms are growing louder.

The company has been presenting itself as a willing, generous participant in American investigations, but more generally as a supranational, self regulating force for good.

''We will do our part not only ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world,'' Mr. Zuckerberg said, ''but also to give everyone a voice and to be a force for good in democracy everywhere.''

For citizen users, ''it's a gesture of good faith. To skeptical countries, it's a gentle declaration of independence, or maybe a dare.

For Facebook, it's something distinct, new and unmistakably state-like : a claim of sovereignty

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Technology Giants, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Tech & Colors '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless