Social media needs to resuscitate the ‘social’ amid tech backlash

The Big Tech professes to have the loftier aim of building a more equitable global society. But they may be promoting just the opposite. Technology companies are no longer seen primarily as positive engines of economic growth. Governments, business leaders and the public are coming to view the Silicon Valley’s overarching power and influence with caution and suspicion.Election interference by Russia-backed groups in the US; spreading fake news, misinformation and extremist content; lacklustre privacy protections; antitrust violations; tax avoidance; the threat of massive job losses as a result of technological advances … the list appears endless. More worryingly, new warnings are being also raised about the physiological effects of technology, including smartphone addiction and social media use harming mental health.The Silicon Valley companies have long been the target of antitrust concerns across the world.Tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google joined Microsoft in 2017 to become the five most-valuable companies in the US. They dominate their markets, using their huge profits and big data advantages to gobble up smaller rivals or to enter new markets. They’ve made close to 500 acquisitions worth about $140bn over the last decade, according to Bloomberg data. That’s been giving regulators headaches for long. In June 2017, the European Union fined Alphabet’s Google $2.7bn for abusing its search-engine dominance by favouring its own shopping service in search results. Germany is examining whether Facebook abuses its market dominance — it now has 2bn-plus regular users worldwide — by requiring new members to give up privacy rights. Japanese and South Korean watchdogs are also looking at the exclusive control Google and Facebook have over vast amounts of consumer data. Tech behemoths could argue they are successful because of the quality of their offerings; why punish success? With some exceptions, they reap hefty profits from small labour forces, leading to more national income going to fewer workers and stagnating median wages overall. “Your days are numbered,” warned billionaire investor George Soros, launching a scathing attack on tech giants at the Davos summit. He called them monopolies that could be manipulated by authoritarians to subvert democracy.To be sure, the Big Tech has been caught in the midst of an encircling storm. The Silicon Valley executives are waking up to the backlash. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, technology executives struck a more conciliatory note, saying they want to work with authorities on a range of challenges, including accepting higher taxes.Across the world, technology has become an inseparable part of everyday life. But the business model of social media, with its stifling data monopoly, may be undermining the well-being of its users. One key solution would be — as Mark Zuckerberg, the 33-year-old chief executive of Facebook has acknowledged — to focus more on the “social” than the “media” element to prioritise those precious personal moments over adverts.Fundamentally, social media users are driven by the same ancient desire: Human Connection. But that has for long been crowded out by addictive technology, amazing products and invasive corporate branding.