Democracies thrive on well-informed public opinion which demands free media and free flow of information.  The digital age was expected to facilitate information empowerment of masses but the opposite has occurred. The initial phase of digital revolution provided diverse sources of news and information and an increase in pluralism. But the present phase, is witnessing highly misinformed and manipulated “choices”. The increasing control of information, now conveniently being termed as ‘data’, has restricted exposure to differing viewpoints and various perspectives of real issues. Powerful information giants are dominating the cyber space.

The global giants Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft collecting all kind of data on us and are in control of huge amount of data on each one of us- more than what we know about our own self. For example, Google trackers have been found on seventy five percent of the top million websites. This means they are also trying to track most everywhere we go on the internet. The result of the tracking is that Google uses our personal profile to sell ads, not only on their search engine, but also on about three million other websites and apps.

Every time we visit one of these sites or apps, Google is following us around with hyper-targeted ads, trying to influence our behavior. Our every action right from a search on Google to a ‘Like’ on Facebook reflect our choices and preferences which are collected and analyzed through artificial intelligence, providing immense power to  global giants to ‘control’ us and take us in a desired direction whether it’s our consumption pattern or political orientation.

This kind of control is being hotly debated across the globe to the extent that the future of democracy is under clouds. It is being argued that the voting in democracy is not what you “think” but what you “feel” and feelings are most vulnerable to the manipulations. This is particularly true of Google and Facebook, which now command an effective duopoly over online advertising.It’s time to imagine a different internet: As unhappiness with Big Tech grows, a space may be opening to consider not only how to change the existing tech giants but also how to re-imagine the internet itself. If we want a more vibrant environment for discourse online, we should be prepared to consider paths that look very different from the ones that led us here. The U.S. tech giants are essential to remaining competitive with the Chinese tech. Excerpts from. New Essay Series: The Tech Giants, Monopoly Power, and Public Discourse. Knight First Amendment Institute

On the one hand the Silicon Valley Giants are making use of free market economy model on the other hand China, being governed by single party dictatorship,   has developed its own system of control. China has already developed alternative platforms of Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram etc. The war for control of cyber space has already set in. It would be interesting to watch what Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms are up to. When the world is grappling with COVID-19, Ambani is on selling spree of its stakes of Jio Platforms. He has sold stakes to Facebook, Silver Lake – a total of five investments within the span of one month — diluting 17.1% of the telecom giant. More investments are reportedly on the horizon with Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) looking buy-in as well. Billions of dollars have been mobilized. The company is also entering the e-commence segment and more might be in the offing.

We need more research access to the platforms: For all of the diversity of perspectives and ideas. There are enormous gaps in our understanding of how the tech giants affect expression, discourse, and the free flow of information. This is due in large part to the lack of transparency on the part of the platforms about their human and machine-made decisions, and how these decisions are shaping and distorting speech online. Among the impediments to understanding how the platforms work is the companies’ refusal to allow researchers and journalists to access and analyze data.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari has put it in this way in his book “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”: “false stories have an intrinsic advantage over the truth when it comes to uniting people. Commercial firms also rely on fiction and fake news. Branding often involves retelling the same fictional story again and again, until people become convinced it is the truth. What images come to mind when you think about Coca-Cola? Do you think about healthy young people engaging in sports and having fun together? Or do you think about overweight diabetes patients lying in a hospital bed? Drinking lots of Coca-Cola will not make you young, will not make you healthy, and will not make you athletic — rather; it will increase your chances of suffering from obesity and diabetes. Yet for decades Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in linking itself to youth, health, and sports — and billions of humans subconsciously believe in this linkage.”https://ideas.ted.com/are-we-living-in-a-post-truth-era-yes-but-thats-because-were-a-post-truth-species/

In recent article   in context of COVID-19, Yuval Noah Harari has stated that “we need to trust scientific data and healthcare experts over unfounded conspiracy theories and self-serving politicians. If we fail to make the right choice, we might find ourselves signing away our most precious freedoms, thinking that this is the only way to safeguard our health.

“It is crucial to remember that anger, joy, boredom and love are biological phenomena just like fever and a cough. If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they can then not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want. If you know, for example, that I clicked on a Fox News link rather than a CNN link, that can teach you something about my political views .But if you can monitor what happens to my body temperature, blood pressure and heart-rate as I watch the video clip, you can learn what makes me laugh, what makes me cry, and what makes me really, really angry.

Imagine North Korea in 2030, when every citizen has to wear a biometric bracelet 24 hours a day. If you listen to a speech by the Great Leader and the bracelet picks up the tell-tale signs of anger, you are done for.” That’s the nature of control that the data system can facilitate. Individual freedom, privacy and our choices may well be in control of some hidden hand. What is the answerer? Do we need a new Internet which is more democratic and respect individual freedom, if so, how to go about it? Who will and who can tame the rampaging bull?

Prof. Subhash Dhuliya
Professor (Culture and Media Studies)
Central University of Rajasthan