While I generally admire your writing, this piece is a bit one-sided.
I have trouble imagining Facebook as the innocent victim of anything, along with Google and the rest of that select batch of titans. At this point, they are much larger as transnational players than any government that goes after them, and fully able to defend themselves.
Anti-competitive behavior is precisely what it says, and we've had a bloody feast of it. I don't see this handful of mega-corporations as morally superior to their governments.
Technological innovation is a fine thing, but not the only fine thing. Responsibility in time of global pandemic is also a fine thing, and so is being an honest broker in the dissemination of dangerous falsehoods that jeopardize our democracy. Sometimes the consensus view has value in the face of self-seeking malice and stupidity. You can't assume that "out-of-consensus" equals "virtuous." Sometimes it equals "toxic."
The consistent irresponsibility of big business going back centuries will never go away. And that guarantees we will always have governments providing the guard rails that rapacious greed resents.
While I generally admire your writing, this piece is a bit one-sided.
I have trouble imagining Facebook as the innocent victim of anything, along with Google and the rest of that select batch of titans. At this point, they are much larger as transnational players than any government that goes after them, and fully able to defend themselves.
Anti-competitive behavior is precisely what it says, and we've had a bloody feast of it. I don't see this handful of mega-corporations as morally superior to their governments.
Technological innovation is a fine thing, but not the only fine thing. Responsibility in time of global pandemic is also a fine thing, and so is being an honest broker in the dissemination of dangerous falsehoods that jeopardize our democracy. Sometimes the consensus view has value in the face of self-seeking malice and stupidity. You can't assume that "out-of-consensus" equals "virtuous." Sometimes it equals "toxic."
The consistent irresponsibility of big business going back centuries will never go away. And that guarantees we will always have governments providing the guard rails that rapacious greed resents.