Techlash is a portmanteau word from technology and backlash, the FT gives a definition: The growing public animosity towards large Silicon Valley platform technology companies and their Chinese equivalents.
I’ve heard it in a few podcasts and seen it in a few articles recently, usually in reference to Facebook or twitter, often in connection to privacy issues or political fallout. But it’s older than I expected. Google trends indicates it was first in use in June 2006. Searches on the term peaked in November 2018, when Facebook was under fire for privacy breaches and for selling data to advertisers.
(This data from google is indexed with the date with the most interest being scored at 100, so it’s hard to know what this interest means. I compared the interest to other search terms and all I can say is – it’s not a very interesting term).
There are genuine concerns about “big tech” that all get rolled up into techlash;
- privacy
- security
- impact on employees/moderators
- effect of the gig economy via online platforms on worker protection
- misuse of personal data to impact democracies
- tax avoidance by the biggest, wealthiest companies
- sale of data to advertisers
- AI’s impact on jobs
- bias in data and the impact on AI
- monopoly as an outcome of platform economics
For users this has been the decade where the internet went from being a playground to a marketplace, it’s the decade the internet lost its joy. Many consumers started to question where their data was going, the EU and California passed privacy legislation that impacted the online world. 18 months after Europe’s GDPR legislation went into effect I still occasionally find a site that has chosen not to adapt their site and blocks me – it’s not a surprise, the penalties are huge, 20M euro or 4% of global turnover whichever is greater.
So what’s the argument against change? That limiting tech companies will reduce innovation.
But these companies are no longer the innovators, Facebook buys innovators, and for a new platform to emerge against Facebook’s 2.4 billion user base seems close to impossible. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google are the establishment now, we can stop treating them as the new kids on the block that need the special treatment to get started.
So what happens next? I expect regulation to protect users and workers (in the case of Uber et al), I expect some attempts to break up the biggest companies – which will fail, and some legislation around competition which might succeed if the EU and the US can find a way to pass similar legislation. I expect Chinese tech entrepreneurs to ignore as much of the legislation as they possibly can get away with.
I expect I will not by an AI virtual assistant in the coming year.
Change Meme 