[Lee Byung-jong] Big tech vs. nation-states

Elon Musk might be one of the richest and most influential people in the world, but he is not untouchable. In Brazil, he recently had to give in to a court order to remove far-right extremists’ accounts from X, the powerful social media platform he owns and runs. Having defied the court order for months in the name of free speech, Musk had to surrender finally as the court blocked the site for 20 million Brazilian users. This case shows how nation-states could rein in the seemingly invincible social networks and other big tech companies that can transmit fake news and hate speech. It could give some insight into the South Korean government which is also waging various battles against tech giants based overseas.

Overseas-based tech giants like Meta, Google, Apple, X, Netflix or Amazon have become so powerful and dominant that some nation-states have difficulty controlling and curbing their influence. In addition to sometimes transmitting misinformation or disinformation, they have been accused of disrupting industries and commerce via monopolies and other unfair business practices. Their algorithms are designed so that users can become addicted to their content and become captive targets of intensive marketing, bringing the companies a constant stream of revenue. Users’ private data can be misused to generate more revenue. In the process, smaller companies may be driven out of the market.

Alarmed by such issues, some governments have devised different measures to regulate certain aspects of big tech companies' activities. I believe such efforts have so far been futile in general, but more recently there has been some progress, most pronounced in Europe. For example, the European Union in March imposed a fine of 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) on Apple for unfair app store rules under its Digital Markets Act. The EU also ordered WhatsApp, owned by Meta, to be interoperable with other messaging services. Google had to let EU users choose which services share their data. In the US, Google had to pay its consumers $700 million in compensation as part of an antitrust settlement for anti-competitive practices by its app store.

Such cases generally concern the market dominance of big tech companies. But I believe the cases of X and other major social media platforms are much more serious as they deal with not only money but also people's minds. A number of critics believe the falsehoods and extremism spread by those platforms can undermine the very basis of democracy. For example, though X's policy states otherwise, the platform often allows users to post manipulated media, misinformation and hate speech, among other restricted content, which can further divide already polarized societies. The current governments of India and Turkey forced X to take down many controversial accounts critical of their administrations. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to remove some far-right accounts questioning past election results for undermining democracy via ultra-conservative viewpoints.

For free speech advocates, such forceful measures may seem draconian. In fact, among the above governments that have taken harsh approaches to regulating X, two show some degrees of authoritarianism. For that matter, Musk insists that his fight is for press freedom and against government censorship. After buying Twitter for $44 billion and renaming it X in 2022, Musk in fact radically reduced the platform’s content moderation ability which he viewed as unnecessary censorship. As a result, X became crowded with more extreme accounts and posts, leading many advertisers to quit. The latest blow to X has been Brazil’s threat to ban it entirely.

Amid increasing pressures from nation-states, some big tech companies voluntarily moderate their content and regulate their business. Recently, social media giant Instagram announced new rules limiting use by teens in the US and elsewhere to mitigate the popular social network’s harmful effects on them. As a result, accounts of those under 18 will be private by default. Private messages are restricted so that teens can only receive them from people they follow or are already connected to. The new measures also allow parents to limit the time teens spend on Instagram, requiring them to get parental permission to use the site longer.

I believe such voluntary self-regulation measures are still insufficient to address the problems big tech companies can cause. For example, young Instagram users could theoretically lie about their ages or might be able to find ways to get parental permission without their parents' knowledge. But self-regulation measures are much more ideal than forceful government actions, particularly in open democratic societies. As giant tech companies gradually move to super-powerful artificial intelligence, it may become even more difficult for governments to regulate them.

The battle between big tech companies and nation-states displays a unique aspect in South Korea. Compared to some other countries, Korea has been less disrupted by multinational big tech companies based overseas as it has nurtured its own tech giants, such as Naver and Kakao. It is one of few countries in the world that are not dominated by overseas-based big tech. But things are changing rapidly. Overseas-based big tech companies are expanding their services in the domestic market at a rapid speed. Naver, the largest domestic search engine, was recently outranked by YouTube as the most popular platform in Korea. Google and Apple were accused of exploiting local content developers and consumers by charging high fees for using their app stores. As legal cases are still ongoing, such fees are still being charged even after the Korean government enacted a law against the practice in 2021 for the first time in the world.

Part of the problem comes from Seoul’s lackluster implementation of regulations and laws on fears that they can hurt local tech companies as well. I believe that lax policy has cost local consumers and content developers dearly. It is time for Korea to join these other governments in reining in big tech.

Lee Byung-jong

Lee Byung-jong is a former Seoul correspondent for Newsweek, The Associated Press and Bloomberg News. He is a professor in the School of Global Service at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.