Big tech is catching heat. Countless exposes, scandals and critiques have seen the firms dragged in front of parliamentary select committees and Congress. On almost every topic – from how they handle hate, fake news, Russia, and cyber-bullying on their platforms, to who they ban, and what they amplify – they seem to get it wrong. This phenomenon even has its own name: the ‘techlash’.
As I’ve watched this fall from grace, there has been something I’ve struggled to reconcile. Over the last decade, I’ve grown to know people working within all of the tech companies. And rather to my disappointment, I’ve never met the crazed, Ayn Rand-reading digital libertarian of our collective nightmares. None of them want to destroy governments or states. None of them wish the laws and ethics of normal life to dissolve away.
At least from my experience, the vast majority of them are thoughtful, reasonable people who are genuinely trying to do the right thing and act with a responsibility equal to the power that they know they hold. They worry about the harms their platforms have created, and genuinely try to do the right things to prevent and mitigate them.
So why are they unable to convince us that they are making good faith, reasonably un-biased decisions about difficult, complex and new problems? Why do we never give them the benefit of the doubt?
By their own admission, some of the decisions the tech companies have made have been dramatically out of step with their consumers and society. Facebook apologised for the “breach of trust” exposed by Cambridge Analytica. Apple (kind of) apologised for deliberately slowing down iPhones as they aged. Twitter first said they wouldn’t ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones because he hadn’t breached their rules. Then, in the face of rising criticism, promptly changed their position and banned him. Google apologised for running ads next to videos espousing terrorism (yet not for the videos themselves).
The list goes on. Google has been fined more than $7 billion by the European Competition Commission over eight years for anti-competitive behaviour, and social media platforms are currently being criticised (again) over the self-harm and pro-suicide content on their sites. And in my eyes the most serious of all, Mark Zuckerberg apologised for ridiculing the idea that Russia had used their platform to influence the 2016 American election.
The rise of these platforms have disrupted everything; from the role of the press, to what privacy means, to the rules around speech and harm. The sweep of responsibilities that these companies have taken on, often against their wishes, is vast, as is the number of problems that they’re currently tangling with.
Listing the flaws of big tech, however, isn’t the point of this article. The techlash would be happening whatever the specific decisions that they’ve made. It exists because of something deeper; an important, incredibly dangerous contradiction at the heart of the digital revolution that isn’t to do with the decisions themselves, but how they are made.
Whether it’s Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or Patreon, we know that they are private services. But we feel that they are public commons. The way that we act, campaign, raise money, argue and unite on these platforms screams public space. And public spaces, we feel, are subject to rules that are publicly made.
Free speech, inclusion, hate, bullying, privacy, democratic participation and so on are all issues that are dissected and discussed in the open. We may frequently disagree with these rules – we may sometimes hate them – but we see that they arise out of the messy business of a democratic polity.
Except online, of course, they do not. The tech giants may try to consult with experts, or talk to communities, but the actual decision-making process itself is – as with almost all commercial entities – totally opaque. It happens between policy officers under non-disclosure agreements. It happens in boardrooms away from the press.
To all of us, online environments are shaped by processes that are completely mysterious. We have no role in them. We can’t even see that they’re happening. So while these decisions are shaping democracy and public assembly, and indeed are often made in the name of democracy and freedom, they are not made democratically.
This problem is dangerously systemic. Far more serious than the wrong person being banned, or the wrong image being left up on the site: this is about the basic way that online services are created, owned and served up to us. Put simply, private companies have never had to make the kinds of decisions that the tech giants are routinely faced with.
Trust in tech fell by between 10% and 20% around the world in 2018, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer, and one of the biggest falls (around 15%) was in the belief that tech companies are adequately transparent in how they operate. The good news for the tech giants is that it’s not too late: almost two thirds of Americans, for example, believe they are “more good than bad” for society. But there’s no doubting, trust is on a downward trend.
So how can that trend be reversed? A new approach is needed, not just for tech but also for how the rules and policies are made that govern it. And there are a number of options for what this might look like.
First, the tech giants could develop digital democracies for deciding the policies that govern them, allowing their users to discuss and shape their rules. As I’ve argued previously for UnHerd, Taiwan already shows how this could work in practice. A new online process called ‘vTaiwan’ includes tens of thousands of people in discussion and decision-making. It’s a rare case where a Government has become more visionary and energetic than big tech itself.
Option two is the Wikipedia model. Alone among the tech giants, the rules that govern Wikipedia are written not by the employees that run the organisation, but by the community that animates it. It’s a constant, rolling debate that can sometimes turn nasty, but no-one can accuse Wikipedia’s rules of being anything less than transparent – anyone, including you or me, could have a say if they want to.
Option three is an idea probably unfamiliar to most; ‘multi-stakeholderism’. Every year, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is held somewhere in the world. Held by the United Nations, it is different from any other diplomatic event: anyone can turn up. It’s not just for officialdom, elites, CEOs or celebrities, but for all the weird and varied tribes that have a stake in how the internet works, from fleece-wearing engineers to Icelandic human rights activists, suited spies to big tech. A strange, raucous kind of talking shop, it has one huge advantage – everyone can have a seat at the table. Like the internet itself, the way that it is governed is an open network that anyone can join.
Each of these models has their own downsides and frustrations. Nothing is actually decided at the IGF – so for the cynic, it’s a talking shop, a PR exercise, a sideshow. Wikipedia presents another kind of problem. Although anyone can edit its pages, the number of people who actively do so has been on a long decline, and about 90% of them are male, leading to bias in the kinds of knowledge that they create. And vTaiwan has to confront the same problem as any attempt to engage people in politics: most people are simply too busy to commit to time-consuming deliberations on most political decisions.
But even with these flaws, these models offer a way forward; because the challenge for big tech isn’t technological, it’s organisational. How do they genuinely give more power to their users to shape the online spaces that they inhabit? Inventing new technology is easy; creating new kinds of organisations with novel governance arrangements is much more difficult. But the tech giants have little choice. They need to change how they make decisions, because without more transparent, participatory governance of online spaces the ‘techlash’ will only worsen.
Carl is the co-founder and Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos and author of The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab, out on 23rd August in hardback from William Heinemann. You can read more of Carl’s work at www.carlmiller.co.
carljackmiller 
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SubscribeIt’ so ironic, it almost beggars belief, one could wail, gnash one’s teeth and stamp up and down with despair. The one thing that could have united this country, was the Empire. Instead of using it as a building block, to forge a new sense of community, a common heritage, it has been traduced and reviled and used to sow dissent and bitterness. Sure, the British Empire was far from perfect, it was no different from any other collective human endeavour, self serving, but for all of it’s contradictions, it did tie, people from all across the globe to a common purpose, for which not a few were prepared to sacrifice their lives. When immigration, became a thing, after the Second World War, many of those initial travellers came to the UK on the back of that shared connection, that forged identity ( My first father-in-law to name but one).
No countries history is perfect, every single one will contain episodes of murder, destruction, greed, exploitation, and Britain, or the British Empire, was no different in that regard, but like all emergent countries it then set about trying to forge a common unifying identity, and not entirely without success. I truly despair, that supposedly clever people, with their own agendas, cannot recognise this simple truth. They seek to unite by destroying the very ties that bind, the very reason that drew people, from all over the world, here in the first place.
And no, I will not apologise, for thinking that the British Empire was not an entirely bad thing (I enjoy Flashman, far to much for that).
The British Empire ended the legal institution of slavery, a reality that had existed since the dawn of human history. That people don’t know this when they start banging on about the evils of the UK’s imperial past borders upon obscenely stupid.
I am with you Mr Lewis. The British Empire was far more ‘good’ than ‘bad’ and yes we both know that the standards expected were not always upheld and there were some very bad episodes. But we have left elements of our parliamentary system, justice, administration, ‘rights’, protection of the weak etc for many countries to use as building blocks for their own development. The Commonwealth of Nations is a sort of testament to that.
Disparaging Empire is a silly academic diversionary cul-de-sac. It’s a part of our history which we should look back on as a time when we gave practical foundational help to what eventually became emergent nations and states. Yes, it was based on increasing our wealth and clout as a nation but so many administrators in the late eighteenth and ninenteenth centuries held high principles based on fairness and good will and that meant improving the lot of the native inhabitants where we settled. Sometimes the system failed but these were exceptional instances to what was a straight-forward determination to govern fairly and equably.
King George III wrote an instruction to his newly appointed Governor of New South Wales, Captain Arthur Philip, to ‘treat the natives fairly’ and to ensure that they were not unnecessarily troubled.The humanity was central to the thinking and that is, overall, what we should be proud of.
That you chose this particular straw to grasp shows a remarkable ignorance of how Aborigines have been treated. I suppose we did treat them fairly, until what they wanted confilcted with what we wanted. Then we started shooting them.
I used to believe in the importance of ‘values’ for the post-Christian west. Now, when every corporation and organisation spouts its monolithic ‘values’ to close dissenters down, I see them as a trojan horse for DIE (Diversity/Inclusion/Equity). DIE is a totalising ideology which, up to a couple of years ago, I would have called un-British.
You can still call them un-British, Judy. I know, I call many progressive memes un-American, such as the blatant disregard for our First Amendment that is involved in de-platforming.
I really liked the Manchester Commonwealth Games when ‘Land of hope and glory’ was used as the English anthem. The music is classy and inspiring; the words do recollect what Britain has always represented. I heard the OBON song – dumbed down like a Eurovision entry: nul points!
You are dissing the creative efforts of UK schoolchildren – sacrilege! Whatever next? You’ll be criticising the NHS soon at this rate!
May be some one could have suggested a theme, something along the lines of tomorrow belonging to them perhaps
That’s a thought – we boomers sold that pup to the millennials, it might work with the subsequent generations…
That was satire, correct – or are you unaware of a German song popular during the Third Reich about “tomorrow belongs to me”?
That’s the thing about satire, you never know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDuHXTG3uyY
Also it was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb (2 of the chosen people) for the film Cabaret in 1972
I don’t understand why ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ can’t be used for this? It inspires hope, belonging and was written by a talented poet and not some random school children. Why are our standards so low? Maybe we should start with that.
Please see our new Relationships/PSHE/character education call it what you will programme for primary schools at http://www.alivetotheworld.com. (See comment below). I’ve always worked on the basis that’s it’s not enough to protest. One has to produce the good alternative and here it is. We even have an exercise getting children to colour in the Union Jack while understanding how it comes from the flags of Ss George, Andrew and Patrick – not forgetting our friends the Welsh whose colourful dragon all the children can colour in. Have a look at the website. So much more in there. Anything anyone can do to advertise it abroad greatly welcomed.
The website is so new I’ve given you the wrong name! It’s http://www.alivetotheworld.co.uk. That’s better.
Orwell was right about the British laughing at militaristic posturing, but he also saw the dangers of totalitarian newspeak and doublethink and wrote Nineteen Eighty Four to warn us. How ironic that plenty of young ‘educated’ Brits now act as if that novel is a guide to the conduct of public affairs.
“What British Values tended to mean, and this wasn’t exactly an accident, was liberal or progressive values, ideas that plenty of people of all backgrounds might feel completely alien to them. Beyond that the things they emphasise — tolerance and respect — are worthy, and something we’d like to teach our children, but they’re not particularly British.”
They’re not particularly Liberal or Progressive either. Wokeism is the latest iteration of Progress within Liberalism, and it’s the diametric opposite of tolerant and respectful.
The Swiss have an admirable level of civic nationalism, partly facilitated by having four official languages. They have one tune for their national hymn, but the lyrics in the different languages express different sentiments. The German lyrics are like advertising copy for the Swiss Tourist Board, whereas the French lyrics read like a version of our footy chant “. If you think you’re hard enough, come and take a chance . . .”. (My knowledge of Italian and Romansh are too limited for me to attempt translations.)
This demonstrates that, as long as the tune is the same, a country does not have to sing from the same hymn sheet.
Great idea. ‘God Save The Team’ does it for sport.
I have long thought that our national anthem should be updated to reflect what is mostly sung as our anthem, namely, “‘Ere We Go”.
For the benefit of non-British commenters the tune is “Stars And Stripes Forever”, and the anthem is very easy to remember, because it would have only four verses. In each verse the same word is repeated throughout, thus:
Optionally verses 2 and 3 could be left out.
It’s a winner.
Doesn’t work for Scotland unless you say Scot-ter-land but Wales is definitely short of syllables.
In fact, Wales has the best anthem by far but the words would be a problem for most people.
Those countries would drop verse 2.
On the matter of re-writing National Anthems, there is this version of the La Marseillaise:
We are the French, we run away
We live to surrender another day
That’s why all French military heroes
Are Women, or, have German Dads.
Not bad, but in the interests of scansion, how about amending the last three words to “are total zeros”? Just a thought.
It does scan better, but I think the line, as is, echoes both the American observation that due to D-Day, ‘Thousands of French women find out what it’s like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn’t call her “Fraulein.” Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.’ and the English football chant of, “You’re S**t, but your birds are fit!”
I think you might have a sideline in writing for I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
Liberal democracy is just a reststop on the road from nationalism to nihilism.
Legutko again!
Which is curious since I am completely irreligious.
I thought the internationally recognised essential British value was fair play? Perhaps we should try and rescue it from the avalanche of BS in which it is drowning
The only society which can successfully make “values” the principle of unity is a totalitarian one – and it can only last for as long as subscription to the “values” is enforced. The moment that weakness kicks in, or fatigue, or doubt, the whole thing goes belly-up. Hence the fall of the Soviet Union. The US pretends it is constructed around a constitution, but that constitution is itself a manifestation of the real reason for US unity and identity, the WASP inheritance – now all but squandered – which means the US is heading for dissolution. National integrity relies on inherited culture which in turn depends on demographic stability. When the ties that bind are deeper than “values”, the bitterest rows are sustainable and deadly division kept at bay. After all, what are “values” at the end of the day but fancy, moralising propositions most likely at variance with real experience? And a proposition naturally excites its own opposition in any conscious mind. Any attempt to build a society on words is doomed, either to speedy collapse – “liberal”; or long, increasingly coercive and hysterical enforcement – Marxist / “Woke”.
Oh dear. The union flag held by the little girl in the picture is upside-down.
To be fair, it’s the person who stuck it on the stick who is to blame. Perhaps she knows hence she is scowling at it slightly
Three lions on a shirt
Plus another one on Scotland’s
Wales have got a DRAGON
And Northern Ireland’s is nice too
GB is a truly great country IMO with great people and great potential, and its not even the 1% that spoil it for everyone else its far less than that. There is no place in this country for that tiny %,. To carry on the 1% analogy they are the “filthy few” and include messrs Johnson, Corbin, Witty, Valance and Ferguson. Spain and Portugal are close in joint 2nd to GB in my exp.The best place for those who have no place here is probably somewhere where they have death squads and psychotic cartel bosses. That’ll learn them.
“One flesh, one bone, one true religion
One voice, one hope, one real decision
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Give me one vision, yeah”
If you sing this in the style of Dennis Waterman in Little Britain, I could get on board with this…
If non-european rulers derived their legitimacy from their value as allies of Britain and the Raj, maybe our modern island story should emphasise our value as vassals of the American empire. Just as Jodhpur ruled herself and provided some of the finest (Indian officered) troops in our imperial armies, so to do we provide submarines equally as advanced as America’s efforts. They have sailed side by side against Russian SSKs and SSNs. No other nation can provide that assistance. Nor can any other nation provide the signals intelligence that America depends on. There is no closer alliance in the intelligence world than UKUSA (even within the already tightly knit Five Eyes).
Zareer Masani spoke of an imperial esprit de corps in the armies of the empire. Maybe we should embrace our role as part of the American empire and make clear how important we are to them.
Sounds about right. Only I do not think the US same view of our significance, not at all
Plenty of Brits disparaged the princes, with the exception of the military. The British Army was desperate for Indian and Nepalese manpower, and were incredibly grateful for what they got. The admiration of the US military (which is very very real) is all we need. Ignore the silly democrats- they are no different to the complacent liberal imperialists of the late 19th century. Ungrateful and increasingly irrelevant.
Was the reference to the JRSST deeply ironic, or a mistake? It has been funding anti British activities for,decades. ( You never know.A Times journalist recently called Glenn Greenwall a conservative journalist).
We’re all fu**ed!
It may still be too early to assess whether the British Empire was a good thing. Like the Ottoman, Roman and earlier empires, it is the imprint left once the centre of power and the history have faded that counts. If positive, this is likely to include some kind of partly real or imagined concept or project that leaves former subjects wealthier in spirit than before. On that basis, despite their predations and brutalities, the Roman and British empires may be thought tilted towards the good, if one overlooks arbitrary borders drawn on maps that are a source of endless trouble. Not so the Ottoman empire or attempts to create copycat empires by other European nations and Japan. Now, what of Britain’s last colony – itself?
This type of article keeps coming along. People in England see that the problem with unity begins in Scotland and Wales. In fact, the problem begins in England – in conversation people struggle with the idea of Britishness not being the same as Englishness.
For total unity, the idea of Englishness has to disappear first because England is dominant in the arrangement but can’t be openly seen to be dominant.
Excellent point. I’ve never been able to pin down what “Englishness” is, so always defined myself as “British”, or “Northern”, or “Yorkshire”. Those identities always triggered a feeling of belonging for me much more than “English” did.
What would you say was “British” and what “English”?
I have always assumed we English are diffident about our nationality as we have had the larger influence over the British Isles in language, driving, law etc. I’m 3rd generation white immigrant and half-English but feel pretty incorporated. The English identity is maybe humour (Carry On films), self-depreciation, nostalgia (Downton Abbey), inventiveness and Christian humanism (abolished slavery in the 12th century) [off the top of my head]!
And this is the problem because everyone else doesn’t get a say in things.
You mean deprecation.
Haha. Yes perhaps too much self-depreciation has led us to this dearth of values
Yes, George, but maybe a malapropism that works?
The slavery abolition was mostly the Normans.
I have lived in Wales for 45 years but was born in the north of England. Before moving to Wales I worked in Scotland. I have never seen myself as English!!!
The north of England is vastly different from the south and is, in fact, nearer in humour and character to Wales – self-deprecating, harsh, corner of the mouth rather than full on. To me Englishness means living within a 100 mile radius of London – it means Londonness. Here is the problem, of course. About half of the British population live in this area and they see Englishness and Britishness as the same thing. This makes the far-flung places feel left out of the party. Hence the arrival of independence movements.
Not sure that’s true. I see myself as English because seeing myself as British sort of implies that I must accept something in common with and vicariously share some aspects of Scottishness. As I see Scotland* as a handouts-dependent complete and utter waste of space and a millstone, I don’t agree that they make up any part of my nationality at all.
I have the same reservation about Northern Ireland, where they bizarrely have a “marching season” to insult each other by commemorating sectarian battles of 300 years ago, and a related one about Welshness. As far as I can see there is no Welsh identity at all. When you think of Scotland you at least think of Ally’s Tartan Army and Trainspotting, but when you think of Wales, does anyone think of anything? Anything at all?
*that of today, not the Scotland of the past – where, if you drew up one list of Scottish inventions and discoveries, and another list of British inventions and discoveries, they’d be almost the same list
This is a good answer but you are confirming what I am saying. Effectively, that Englishness doesn’t have room for anything else.
I’m more about suggesting that being British and English is like being north American and American. There cannot be many Americans who consider Mexicans, Panamanians and Canadians their compatriates.
Well no, those are separate countries from the US. But as yet Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channels (did I miss anything?) all share the same country with England.
If you visit North Wales you will meet lovely people speaking an ancient language.one feels Wales.Its magical.
I am 100% behind Welsh independence but a language is no good for putting food on the table. This idea, that everything depends on a language is what is slowing us down. We need high-paid jobs:- battery producers, the tidal power unit in Swansea, something in the empty space of mid-Wales, technology instead of social science.
I worked in north Wales (well, it was a big chunk of my sales territory) as a graduate and I love the countryside. It is a fabulous place straight out of Tolkien. I am not sure that it adds up to an identity though.
Hi Chris, I was born within 100 miles of London and have never identified with it. I’ve been visiting the capital for 50 years and it progressively became less and less the capital of England and more like an international city of the kind you see in dystopian Sci-Fi films. The only things vaguely English are connected to the Monarchy. Now of course it’s become a political playground under the present Mayor.
I tried replying but for some reason it is ‘waiting for approval’. Time to withdraw from UnHerd, I think.
Howards End has an interesting debate about this. Little England it used to be called , disparagingly, in the days of the Empire. Belloc,and Chesterton portrayed it very well, as well as E.M. Forster. Germany went through a similar identity crisis during its unification under Bismarck.Highly influential writers wanted,Germany to be more like Switzerland. I must admit I find Englishness very easy to understand, based in its ethereally beautiful countryside, nostalgic anthems and bloody minded people.
No, that’s the problem, Englishness has been destroyed to make way for Britishness. The problem isn’t that Englishness is in the way, it’s that Englishness doesn’t exist. We are English, not British, and that is where our focus should be. Britain is a political union, that is all, and the English ties to Britain is what is weakening us because it’s us who are bearing the brunt of it. The Scottish or the Welsh don’t consider themselves British before their national identities so why do we?
You are just agreeing with me but using different words. The reason why Britishness does not work is that Englishness gets in the way. That’s what I said.
“We are Britain and we have one dream to unite all people in one Great Team”.
The road to Brexit was built and paved with such stuff…
Our diversity is our greatest strength … let’s embrace it!
I think the down ticks don’t appreciate irony. Another term I like is diversity and inclusion. Orwellian Newspeak.
Even better, let’s “celebrate” it!