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LAST THURSDAY, THE market value of Facebook’s newly-renamed parent company Meta dropped by more than $220bn (over €190 billion).
The company and its flagship social network have been central to the building of the modern internet, and more than a third of the world’s population still uses Facebook at least once a month. But despite his leading role in shaping the digital world we all live in, investors are no longer confident that Mark Zuckerberg can predict that world’s future, let alone decide it.
He’s not the only one. The online world is in a state of flux, with new technologies and social networks rising to the fore, and new challenges—both technical and socio-political—cropping up for industry leaders and everyday users alike. Are we, in Ireland and across the EU, ready for those challenges?
Artificial intelligence, virtual reality (or “the metaverse” as Zuckerberg likes to call it), blockchain and cryptocurrency: the evangelists of emerging technologies promise that they will radically transform how we live and work online, and for the better. It’s hard to evaluate such claims; wearable tech like Google Glass largely failed to live up to their hype, but the smartphone was a technological and societal revolution in ways no one could have predicted.
The latest series of innovations is no different, and even the tech’s proponents can’t see the future. A huge crypto crash, hardly the first the market has seen, wiped out $205bn of market value in January. Meta’s overinvestment in virtual reality is thought to be largely responsible for its recent market troubles, as those investments have yet to pay off. And while artificial intelligence is successfully integrated into more and more everyday technology, this frequently has unexpected outcomes and worrying privacy implications.
We don’t yet know which emerging technologies will truly be transformative, and whether those transformations will be universally good. We just know that things are changing, and fast.
Governance
Questions about rights and regulations online have been around since the dawn of the internet, but most remain unresolved. A Rubicon moment for privacy and the real-world impact of social media was the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In 2018 it was revealed that the now-defunct company was mining huge amounts of data from social networks, mostly Facebook, to allow political campaigns to create detailed psychological profiles of voters to use to persuade them.
Four years on, it doesn’t seem that we’ve got a clear answer on what tech companies should be allowed to do, or how governments should enforce the rules that do exist. The stakes are only getting higher, with social media being accused of fuelling ethnic cleansing in places including India and Myanmar via disinformation and incitement to hatred.
Our regulatory tools do not seem to have kept pace with the evolving issues. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, responsible for much of the Big Tech regulation in Europe, has been repeatedly accused of inefficiency and leniency, and admitted to government in December it is “unfit for purpose”.
On the other hand, a bill currently being considered by the Oireachtas would put regulation of social media, broadcast media and online communication under one combined body, the Media Commission. The legislation would give the watchdog broadly-phrased rules and sweeping powers of enforcement, but critics have said the proposal is a blunt instrument which treats social networks like traditional communication methods or broadcast media, when in reality it’s not quite comparable to either.
Almost everyone agrees that how we’re regulating tech companies right now isn’t working, but no one has a universally-agreeable solution.
Overall, the state of the internet right now is one of uncertainty; there’s a sense we’re living in a pivotal moment, but we can’t yet tell which direction that pivot will take us.
Over the next few weeks, The Good Information Project will seek to assuage some of that uncertainty by exploring the big digital questions of the day; privacy, decentralisation, regulation and much more. Don’t miss it.
We want to hear from you
The Journal launched The Good Information Project with the goal of enlisting readers to take a deep dive with us into key issues impacting Ireland right now.
You can keep up to date by signing up to The Good Information Project newsletter in the box below. If you want to join the discussion, ask questions or share your ideas on this or other topics, you can find our Facebook group here or contact us directly via WhatsApp.
This work is also co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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I think you should put IAB into the equation. I don’t recall reading on the Journal about last week’s news of the Belgian data protection supervisory authority (equivalent of the DPC) and their decision. It should be a wake up call. There is significant lobbying giving wrong advice such as allowing ‘legitimate interest’ on cookies. Cookie banner vendors not able to sell compliant products. Also, there is a large amount of personal data collected by google and sent outside the EU on most websites, used for google surveillance for ‘advertising’. A lot of enforcement could be sorted quickly.
AI is where tight regulations need to be implemented. I fear that AI will get so powerful, we will go past the point of rescue if it is not regulated soon.
@James Beattie: skynet
@James Beattie: if the GDPR was enforced, a lot would be covered. At present, before AI kicks in, there is massive amount of data unlawfully collected that no one has the guts to say to FB it should be deleted. Then there is profiling and transparency. Enforcement of these would help significantly.
The push is towards online regulation and silencing anyone that does not stick to the prevailing definition of “Good Information”, some people calling for it genuinely believe it will be a positive outcome, those people lack imagination.
The idea of defining if current technological development is good or bad is pointless, its how its used that defines that in practice, currently how profit driven corporations decide to use the data is the concern, but an AI is likely to make decisions based on criteria than we can’t even imagine, much less control.
Corporations hoping to harness its power to profit, universally lack the humility to realise they can’t control, coerce or contain a true AI, that could become sentient and decide the fate of humanity in a nanosecond.
@David Van-Standen: agree Dave
“The company and its flagship social network have been central to the building of the modern internet” – You are joking, right? Unless to you modern internet is synonymous with social media.
I haven’t used Facebook in nearly a decade, and proud of it!
have your say