Front Burner - COVID-19 puts Big Tech under the microscope, again

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

The wildfire spread of misinformation about COVID-19 on social media is giving critics of Big Tech ammunition in their fight. It comes at a time when Facebook and Google face major antitrust lawsuits in the U.S., and some are calling on Canada to do more to regulate tech giants. Our guest is Taylor Owen, director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University, and host of the Big Tech podcast.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson, and today on FrontBurner, a conversation about two huge issues. First, the growing push to regulate and break up big tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a huge antitrust lawsuit against Google, and there are reports that at least 20 states are preparing another one against Facebook. And second, how the wildfire spread of misinformation about COVID-19 on social media is giving big tech critics ammunition in their fight. I'm talking to

Taylor Owen, Director of the Center for Media Technology and Democracy at McGill, and host of the Big Tech Podcast. Hey, Taylor, thanks so much for being here today. Hi, thanks so much for having me. So I want to start this conversation by talking about misinformation on social media, because I think that's probably what's most front and center for people right now, especially during the pandemic. And so what have you seen recently that is of concern to you? Well, so for a long time, or for the past few years, the conversation about misinformation

has been about elections, starting with the 2016 US election, through a bunch of elections around the world, including our own in 2019 here. Canada's top electronic spy delivered a warning. We do anticipate to see cyber attempts to influence the election. We believe multiple hacktivist groups could make such attempts. But I think we've now actually hit even a more concerning moment where we have a situation where with the vaccine rollout and with the public health response to the COVID pandemic, where we really need a lot of people or most

people in society to agree on some basic things. We need them to follow public health directives. Starting very soon, we will need them to take a vaccine. And we need like 75% of people or 85% of the people in the country to do that same thing together, all take the vaccine. And this is bumping right up against the way we get our information now and the way that system works, which is deeply fragmented, prone to vulnerabilities around people who want to co-opt our views for any sorts of nefarious purposes, and is creating and is leading to a distrust of the very institutions

we all need to now be trusting. This family of viruses was manipulated and studied in a laboratory. If you accidentally thought for yourself, you'd realize the current COVID-19 death count is many times less than the original predictions that were used to justify the lockdown. And enslave humanity through a sinister vaccine conspiracy. Right. And so we know that Facebook and YouTube in particular, let's talk about them for a minute. They have been big sources of anti-vax propaganda. So talking about the vaccine for a second. And they've been criticized for this for a long time. And I know they've taken some action on

this recently to try and mitigate some of this. But what are these platforms doing now to try to stop the spread of anti-vaccine misinformation during the pandemic? So different platforms are doing different things. I think we have to stay away from the start. YouTube has actually done very little compared to many of the others. Facebook has recently banned anti-vax advertising, which is a positive step. But there's two real limitations to what's going on here.

One is, what kind of content are they actually banning? And absolutely, purely false information about vaccines. So the vaccination program is a plot by Bill Gates to inject microchips in us. COVID-19 was long pre-planned in documents and simulation exercises emanating from the eugenicist Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation. A verifiably false piece of information that is circulating quite widely. That is something that can be removed and banned. What is harder to ban is skepticism, is perhaps legitimate or based in legitimate concerns about widespread vaccinations or the results of vaccinations. If I am shown hundreds of pieces of content that question the science behind the development of the vaccine

or the pace of its development or question the integrity of either government regulators like the CDC or the pharmaceutical companies themselves, that can arguably put enough doubt in me that it nudges my behavior to not take the vaccine. And it doesn't have to do it for everybody. It just has to do it for enough people to sow that doubt. And I worry that that is the environment we currently exist in. And I worry that that is the environment we currently exist in.

And that points to this much bigger systemic issue, which is how information circulates at all within this system. And so that's one point. The second is, why have they banned it now? Anti-vax content has been circulating widely for the past year on all of these platforms. And they have now chosen to ban it. What exactly have they banned? How do we know if the ban has been effective? Were governments involved with the terms of the ban? Can we audit whether it has worked or not? So all of these things around whether this is actually the right thing to do

and when are absent from this conversation. It is like a decree that they made, that they have decided now that this is in the best interest of society. And that points to a bigger democratic problem, I think. And it sounds like you think that more needs to be done here and what needs to be done here. And you and I have talked about this on the podcast before. So I think that this is your position that democratic governments need to step in here, right? Absolutely. For those of us that are lucky enough to live in democratic societies, that have degrees of democratic accountability, however, imperfectly built into them, should expect that our democratically accountable governments are

making some of these really tough decisions, which are legitimately tough, rather than global companies outside of the accountability structures in our society. So I want to talk to you about that today, what our government has and hasn't done on this front. Because, you know, the Canadian government has also said that they would like to do something here, step in and do some sort of regulation. And I remember in May of 2019, Justin Trudeau, he stands up at this summit in Paris and he talks about how Canada was introducing this digital charter, right? I'm announcing that Canada is stepping up. It will touch on principles like universal access and transparency, and it will serve as our guide as we craft new digital policy.

And this would be a kind of framework for the government to hold these tech giants accountable for things like disinformation, misinformation, violent extremism, privacy breaches, and that if these platforms didn't live up to those standards, there would be these financial consequences. The platforms are failing their users and they're failing our citizens. They have to step up in a major way to counter disinformation. And so it's been a year and a half since that announcement. And what has Canada done to address some of these issues and, you know, maybe try to get ahead of some of the issues that we're now seeing come up during the pandemic, if anything? So it pains me to say it, but if you look at what has actually been done in terms of

new laws and regulations that have actually been passed, almost nothing has been done. The digital charter provided a, I think, valuable framework for regulating big tech. It had it in its core, the idea that you can't just play kind of whack-a-mole with bad content. You need to attack the incentive structure of the system, and you need systemic approaches to governance. You need to reform data privacy. You need to create new content moderation policies and laws. You need to look at the competition environment, like whether we should break these companies up. You need to look at the recommendation algorithms and feed engagement that cause some of these problems. You need to get at the core. So it said all of that.

But for the past year and a half, the government has been thinking and developing how to do something. Right. And we've seen bits and pieces. So the new data privacy law legislation was tabled last month. To give Canadians more control and greater transparency over how companies handle their personal information. This includes allowing people to move their information from one organization to another

and the right to have their information deleted. Companies could face fines of up to 5% of global revenue or $25 million, whichever is greater for the most serious offenses. But none of that's been passed yet. Okay, so we've made some moves on the data and privacy front. Where else have you seen some movement? So, I mean, the government is apparently developing a set of policies around harmful speech,

although we haven't seen that yet. The Competition Bureau has started an investigation of Amazon's behavior in Canada, but fairly limited, I think. So look, I guess my baseline here is that while we have been thinking seriously and talking about this problem, and in a very deliberative way, developing policies within it, other countries have been barreling forward on this agenda. And talk to me about those other countries. Let's break the two apart here. Let's first talk about regulating content, and then we can talk about breaking these companies up. So on the content side, tell me what other countries in the world have been up to. I'm thinking Germany, the Netherlands, the UK here. Yeah, so Germany was out front of almost everybody on this. They passed a law that

essentially banned hate speech online and put very high fines on platforms that did not take down flagged incidences of hate speech. The Justice Minister Heiko Maas, who introduced the legislation, said it will prevent calls to murder, hate speech and Holocaust denial, which he described as attacks on other people's freedom of expression. France tried to do something similar and actually it was found unconstitutional, which is a challenge we might find in Canada as well. So they've backed off it a bit. The UK takes an approach they call the duty of care, which is they place a responsibility on platforms for being sort of healthy participants in society and put a bunch of mandates on that. The EU is in the process of launching really widespread regulatory reform, kind of bridging all these different areas.

So like, the key there, though, is that none of those solutions are perfect. And it's because we're in this totally new domain of policymaking. And if you wait too long for the perfect to find the absolute perfect strategy, you're going to miss this whole iterative conversation that's occurring around the world, where a government tries something pushes the envelope forward, we learn what works and what doesn't, and then another government does something. And I worry that we haven't been a part of that process, which is really changing how the internet's regulated, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

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That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. So I want to move on now to the second, you know, sort of regulatory tool that you talked about, which is this idea that we could break these companies up. And, you know, this is using like antitrust laws, anti-competition laws, and to break them up into smaller companies. So many people argue the likes of Facebook, Google, Amazon, these guys are monopolies, right?

That they are harmful to consumers because they use their bigness to inhibit innovation and stifle competition. and also that they concentrate so much economic power in the hands of just a few and that this also undermines democracy because these few powerful companies now have all of this power and all of this money to spend on things like lobbying and trying to protect themselves from proper oversight in a democratic society. And so you mentioned that there's a lot going on elsewhere. But why do you think that Canada hasn't been more involved on this front on sort of the fight to break these companies up? So first, I think it's worth looking at what these kinds of policies are seeking to accomplish.

And ultimately, the goal is to create fair markets, or to allow the market to function in the best way possible for the interests of society. There's really three ways people are going at this with big tech at the moment. The first is traditional antitrust, like you mentioned, trust busting policies. Like let's break these companies up. Right. So Facebook has to give up Instagram, basically, which they own and WhatsApp, and they have to divest from it. Exactly. So you can roll back purchases and acquisitions. from it. Exactly. So you can roll back purchases and acquisitions. You could say that Amazon isn't allowed to both control the marketplace and sell products in it. You could say that Google isn't allowed to put ads, sell ads in its search results and control search, right? So these really

traditional antitrust measures of just a company both owning platforms and competing within them. And that really has a negative effect on market conditions. The challenge with this, though, is that you need to think of consumer harm as not just financial penalty. It used to be that we saw monopolies as a problem because they drove up prices. But that isn't the case here. Google searches are free. Facebook is free. Amazon drives prices down, not up.

So price differential can't be our measure. It needs to be other things. This means thinking like data privacy abuses or harmful speech and hate speech. Yeah, and just coming back to that harmful speech and hate speech. Yeah. And just coming back to that harmful speech and hate speech idea, you know, could the argument be made that Facebook has a monopoly on the world social media market? I think they have two thirds of the world social media market. So they're a monopoly in that sense. And that's why they need to be broken up. Yeah, I mean, so if I as a consumer or user of Facebook don't like their content

moderation policies, say the way I'm continually recommended into anti-vax groups, for example, what choice do I have? I don't have a real competitor to Facebook to go to, to make a better content moderation choice. So arguably, if Instagram and Facebook were separate, they might have two different policies on anti-vax content. So choice can ultimately lead to potentially, not necessarily, but if you take sort of the kind of free market at its core value, it creates choice that can create better incentives that can lead to better social outcomes. Right. And so where is Canada in this conversation? You know,

as the U.S. launches an antitrust case against Google, which is going after, you know, their alleged unfair domination of the search engine. Federal prosecutors accusing Google of being a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet, paying phone manufacturers and tech companies billions to allow Google to be their default search engine. As, you know, they prepare to launch lawsuits against Facebook, going after their acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp. Like, where are we in this conversation?

There is a new investigation into Amazon's practices in Canada that is a positive step. But so far, we have been very reluctant to evolve this notion of consumer harm beyond financial penalty. The German government, the British government, the Australian government

have all gone in this direction. The EU is too. And we've been very reluctant to. The German government, the British government, the Australian government have all gone in this direction. The EU is too, and we've been very reluctant to. And what do you think the consequences are of that? Because, I mean, someone might be listening thinking, well, these are American companies, so maybe this should be America's job. both with the competition policy and hate speech policies and data policies. Yes, these are companies that don't originate in Canada who are ultimately trying to govern the digital ecosystem for everybody on the planet. I mean, this is the scale we're dealing with here.

But that does not mean they should not be subject to Canadian laws. And Canadian laws and regulations should be made in the interests of us. So I think we're getting at the sort of foundational challenge here, which is the very nature and design of the way the internet works is global and wants to flatten everything and everyone to be a single unit user that is treated the same by these companies, when in reality, the way we decide how society functions is really embedded in our systems of governance, which are largely national. And I think we have every right to think about whether the economic conditions, the social conditions, the democratic conditions that exist within this system are aligned with our own social democratic priorities.

And if they're not, we should govern. We don't not govern other multinationals because they aren't based in Canada. We govern international oil companies. We govern international pharmaceutical companies. This isn't a new problem. And so, you know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, Taylor, but you sound a bit disappointed. You sound like you wish you had seen more from this government in the last two years, year and a half since this digital charter was announced.

And so I wonder if you could talk to me a little bit more about what you think this lack of action could result in, especially right now in the middle of this pandemic. And I imagine then we will sort of end with where we started. So there has been a lot of progress in the development of Canadian policy in this space, the way the public, I think, has learned about this challenge and is now really on board with some of these things we've been talking about in a way they weren't two years ago. So I don't want to say nothing's happened. If I sound frustrated, it's on two fronts. One, because we just aren't participating in the way I think we could be

in this space of innovation that's happening in how societies think about their relationships with technology. The second, and to bring it back to the vaccine conversation, is I think because we have not addressed the systemic and structural problems sooner, it's too late for the vaccine misinformation problem. We have missed that because there is no way in the next year we can make the kind of systemic changes that are needed to tilt the dial on that issue. We are now going to have to live with this ecosystem, this information environment that we've allowed to emerge that I think is in many ways counterproductive to our ability to overcome this pandemic. All right, Taylor Owen, thank you as always.

My pleasure. All right, so before we go today, I just want to mention something. Taylor and I couldn't fit into this conversation because there is so much to tackle on this subject. And that's the issue of taxing the tech giants. You may remember last week, Krista Freeland announced a plan to essentially put GST and HST on tech giants like Netflix and Airbnb. So essentially, you and I are now going to pay tax to watch the crown. She also said that Canada was working with the OACD, a group of countries, on a tax for the revenues of these companies. And if there wasn't an agreement by 2022, then we would go at it alone. After our chat, I asked Taylor about this, and he said the sales tax proposal is a long time coming and would do something to help level the playing field with other Canadian companies, but that it's pretty much the lowest hanging fruit in regulation.

As for the corporate tax, well, it's complicated, like so much of this discussion. The U.S. is pushing back heavily on this, and they've stalled the OECD talks. But Taylor ultimately thinks this is another example of Canada not leading. France, for example, has started taxing the revenue of these digital giants on their own. And he says other countries could join in without the U.S. and that would still have an impact. All right, I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.