And not in a good way
This oligarch cover of “All Over the World” won’t be spawning flash mobs. At least not the dancing kind.
Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic:
During an American election, a rich man can hand out $1 million checks to prospective voters. Companies and people can use secretly funded “dark money” nonprofits to donate unlimited money, anonymously, to super PACs, which can then spend it on advertising campaigns. Podcasters, partisans, or anyone, really, can tell outrageous, incendiary lies about a candidate. They can boost those falsehoods through targeted online advertising. No special courts or election rules can stop the disinformation from spreading before voters see it. The court of public opinion, which over the past decade has seen and heard everything, no longer cares. U.S. elections are now a political Las Vegas: Anything goes.
That is not how it works in other countries, Applebaum explains. Campaign spending in European countries is limited by law, and such barricades against the influence of Big Money exist elsewhere. Donor transparency, equal time, rules against hate speech, etc., are intended “to create conditions for fair debate, to build trust in the system, and to inspire confidence in the winning candidates.”
Tech billionaires with enough money to control the weather threaten popular sovereignty. They are aided by a system of cryptocurrencies that can channel dark money into anonymous disinformation accounts across social media. Both have undermined our democracy here and are now at work internationally. What was once a Cold War practice of nation-states surrepetitiously funding foreign political parties is now practiced by an impossibly rich class of transnational oligarchs seeking “agenda setting” power beyond the legal reach of popular will to bring them to heel.
Only one institution on the planet is large enough and powerful enough to write and enforce laws that could make the tech companies change their policies. Partly for that reason, the European Union may soon become one of the Trump administration’s most prominent targets. In theory, the EU’s Digital Services Act, which took full effect last year, can be used to regulate, fine, and, in extreme circumstances, ban internet companies whose practices clash with European laws. Yet a primary intent of the act is not punitive, but rather to open up the platforms: to allow vetted researchers access to platform data, and to give citizens more transparency about what they hear and see. Freedom of speech also means the right to receive information, and at the moment social-media companies operate behind a curtain. We don’t know if they are promoting or suppressing certain points of view, curbing or encouraging orchestrated political campaigns, discouraging or provoking violent riots. Above all, we don’t know who is paying for misinformation to be spread online.
Enter Trump-Vance:
In November, the European Commission fined Meta more than $800 million for unfair trade practices. But for how much longer will the EU have this authority? In the fall, J. D. Vance issued an extraordinarily unsubtle threat, one that is frequently repeated in Europe. “If NATO wants us to continue supporting them and NATO wants us to continue to be a good participant in this military alliance,” Vance told an interviewer, “why don’t you respect American values and respect free speech?” Mark Zuckerberg, echoing Vance’s misuse of the expression free speech to mean “freedom to conceal company practices from the public,” put it even more crudely. In a conversation with Joe Rogan in January, Zuckerberg said he feels “optimistic” that President Donald Trump will intervene to stop the EU from enforcing its own antitrust laws: “I think he just wants America to win.”
I read that twisted use of “free speech” and thought “To Serve Man.” They’re using our own principles against us.
Where once Vladimir Putin was the most prominent player seeking to undermine European sovereignty, Applebaum explains, now it’s über-rich Americans:
… because they don’t want to be regulated—and they may have the American president on their side. Quite soon, the European Union, along with Great Britain and other democracies around the world, might find that they have to choose between their alliance with the United States and their ability to run their own elections and select their own leaders without the pressure of aggressive outside manipulation. Ironically, countries, such as Brazil, that don’t have the same deep military, economic, and cultural ties to the U.S. may find it easier to maintain the sovereignty of their political systems and the transparency of their information ecosystems than Europeans.
In my earlier post, I cited a Laura Clawson comment that “Once again I feel like this reality is brought to us by a writer badly in need of an editor.” For myself, this growth of tech oligarch power resembles the plot of a bad 50s sci-fi flick I saw as a kid. Anne Applebaum suggests it’s spreading all over the world.
(h/t DJ)