Not long ago, the NY Times published an article that considered this question: Why isn’t the tech industry charged and sentenced more for the crimes they commit? I wouldn’t have wasted all that space they did on the answer, because it’s an easy one: The tech industry watches and controls most human activity now! They’re bigger than any government or policing authority, including America’s.
Facebook has been on the hot seat recently for allowing people to post misinformation and outright lies as well as for causing kids to commit atrocities to themselves, sometimes leading to suicide. But Apple can tell the FBI to pound sand; Bezos can exploit Amazon workers as well as customers; both Apple and Microsoft control our computers and other electronic devices; Facebook, Google, and Twitter spy on everyone; etc., etc. How much of this is legal, if any of it?
Probably most of it is legal, considering present laws (or the lack thereof), because tech is so big, they’re far ahead of any government or policing agency’s abilities to block (the EU, for example), lumbering organizations that just dawdle along, people in them wringing their hands as they discuss what’s legal or not, and what should be legal or not. But probably most of what I mentioned should be illegal! And a lot of people are coming around to my way of thinking.
Most tech companies are worldwide and don’t give a rat’s ass whether you’re a terrorist or saint as long as you use their products. And, by spying on you, they can send you targeted ads for “just what you need”: An insurrection directed at the US Capitol (January 6), young women who appeal to a serial rapist, or GoFundMe scams…you name it. If some startup starts competing with a big tech company (WhatsApp and Instagram vs. Facebook, for example), that startup is bought out. Monopoly laws don’t apply. They’re outdated, of course, and lazy politicians don’t like to rock the boat—campaigns are expensive, and they like big tech’s funding.
Many tech companies have operative costs and profits larger than many nations’. They’re in control. One can easily imagine (like I did) a futuristic dystopia where their mercenaries maintain order among the chaos they create (vigilante justice, of course). Huxley could never have imagined such a “brave new world”; his dystopia was drug-based, not technologically based. While a drug-based one might still come to haunt us, present circumstances indicate that it will probably be one caused by big tech companies if we don’t learn how to control them. Right now they’re out of control.
And don’t think that Silicon Valley is where all the tech crimes occur. Big tech firms are like Jules Verne’s giant squid but like a giant mutation with hundreds of tentacles strangling every corner of the Earth. And I can see lots of mergers between America’s and China’s tech firms in the future because the West’s big tech firms believe in fascist capitalism, which is the Chinese model.
Yes, big tech firms are crooks, big, sophisticated ones. We just haven’t defined their crimes well enough yet because they’re so good at hiding them. Moreover, we allow them to police themselves. How stupid is that? People worry about chips in vaccines? Anyone with a smart phone or laptop should be more worried about them…and those who control them! God help us! We need divine intervention, it seems, because we’re incapable of action.