Small bites no.1: Who owns the information feed?
How monopolies are suffocating our democracy
I am quite tired of hearing arguments that everything is in crisis and there is no single root cause to the unrest and turmoil we are seeing in the world right now. There are people to blame, but they want us to believe that there is no single solution to fixing our current woes.
It's Ukraine and Russia! They say.
It's the cost of the pandemic! They cry.
It's too much red tape! They froth.
It's people being lazy! They accuse.
Sure, Russia, the pandemic, inflation, etc., are part of the picture. But the root cause of our problems is fairly simple: Monopolies.
Who sets public opinion is determined largely by the media, both traditional and modern. Traditional media in the UK is owned by a tiny handful of very rich people. That's a problem for sure. But that tiny handful of rich people are beholden to an even smaller group of monopolies: Google, Meta, and to a lesser extent Twitter.
These companies control what news a huge number of people get to see. We don't often think about it that way, but it's true. Rather than browsing for news ourselves, news is placed in front of us by the mysterious algorithms these companies create. To have their news seen, news media organisations have to pay to get access to modern online consumers.
Your news feed is a bleakly appropriate name. You are being fed the news. Regardless of your own freedoms and desires, your political leanings and ideologies, you are an animal in front of the trough of search engines and social media, and you eat what those platforms give you.
The whims of the billionaires that own these monopolies can give or take away, like a king with a sword.
If they don't want wages to rise significantly, which politician is going to risk their next round of donations or a bad round in the press to suggest it?
If they don't want to see higher taxes on the wealthy, they can fund nonsense ideas about immigration and rich flight and spooked markets.
If they don't want to improve working conditions in their businesses, they can squash media coverage, threaten to axe jobs, and boost more sensational distracting stories.
How do we advocate for the good of our nation, when we're so beholden to a tiny handful of men in the United States of America? Democracy dies when the electorate at large has no real say in government.
This is also why every government seems to be cookie cutter copies of what came before, even when we change political parties. Every party of British government has been bought by these monopoly tech giants that exercise a vice-like grip on our media.
Just think for a moment about where Nick Clegg went to work right after he got booted out of government: Facebook.
If we want to get our democracy back, there is a simple solution: Demolish these monopolies. Break them up. Break up their influence. Break up their control. Stop new monopolies from getting a foothold.
Want to take back control? Time to bite the hand that feeds you.