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On October 4, Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp experienced a global outage that lasted almost seven hours. Hundreds of millions of users around the world were left without access to the platforms, but these issues surpassed more than just the inability to update fashionable outfit details on Instagram stories or reposting political articles on Facebook.
Facebook has worked to create a monopoly around telecommunications and connectivity outside of the United States that has forced much of the world to become reliant on its messaging platforms. Whatsapp has become one of the most popular messaging apps outside of the U.S., and Facebook has worked to maintain this dominance. When it experiences outages as it did a few weeks ago, millions of people, forced to rely on Whatsapp, are entirely left in the dark. If these outages are unintentional, it sparks questions of what dangers arise from centralized power into one entity that impacts almost two billion people worldwide.
Learn more about the need to #BreakUpBigTech and regulate the digital world.
Monopolies are not new — from the Rockefellers to Walmart, hoarding wealth and economic power into one or a few conglomerates per industry has been happening for decades. However, Big Tech’s corporate domination has consistently compromised fair elections, put thousands of lives at risk, and led to an increase in organized violence and online harassment. In response, civil rights organizations have long called for increased regulation of tech’s widespread power, but their ability to disregard responsibility over that past decade has proven they cannot self-regulate.
In the meantime, Black communities have been disproportionately impacted by Big Tech’s lack of accountability. White nationalist organizing has found a home on digital platforms, disinformation contributes to Black voter suppression and discriminatory advertising practices have targeted Black users. The strongest solution to curtail these abuses of power is legislative action from Congress.
Join Color Of Change in calling for regulations on the monopolies that jeopardize Black communities.
A collection of legislative bills are being introduced to address the impact of Big Tech on the user safety they continuously jeopardized. These bills aim to designate specific behavior as abuse of monopoly power, regulate monopoly acquisitions and expansion, and increase funding for antitrust enforcers like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Redefining and building regulatory power is a necessary step in moving past the current dominance of tech companies in our daily lives. We cannot wait for another leak, breach or outage to once again recognize that one company shouldn’t be able to impact so much of the world.
Congress has an obligation to ensure these protections are implemented and fight for increased antitrust enforcement. Democratic representatives must answer the demand from their constituents to ensure these protections are guaranteed by law. The impact of Big Tech on elections, connectivity and our culture has solidified the need to rein in their impact — Congress knows this, and it’s their responsibility to act on this.
Regulating monopoly power yields both greater opportunities for Black businesses and instills greater protections for Black users and employees. No matter how much Big Tech rebrands or renames, exploitative and harmful practices still remain at the core of their business models. Creating better structures of business operations and breaking up negligent, dominating powers has the potential to create a digital infrastructure where Black content creators can express themselves freely and online harassment is taken seriously.
A world with enforcements against the abuses of Big Tech is one founded in racial equity for all participating in digital spaces.
