Google and the Search for Digital Platform Accountability
The national discussion about the future of digital platforms is incomplete without turning the spotlight on Google. The business model that Facebook perfected – invasive technologies, manipulation, and markets for criminals to sell illicit goods and services – Google practically invented: If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product.
It’s time for Congress to ask Google the tough questions. How much money do you make off my personal data? How are malicious actors – jihadis, opioids dealers, hostile governments and peddlers of illicit goods and services – manipulating your platforms to undermine society and harm consumers? And how do you profit when they do it?
We need to know what they do with our private information and how aggressively they profit off its insights. We need to know how they intend to police their platforms to ensure opioids aren’t as easy to buy as shoes, or that radical extremists and hate groups can’t reach our children as simply as Dunkin Donuts. Google can’t avoid accountability. It needs to be part of the solution to ensuring that our digital platforms don’t slip into the Dark Web. That means outlining for Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and citizens specific solutions about how it will respect Americans’ privacy and not let criminals and other bad actors run free on its platforms.
The national discussion about the future of digital platforms is incomplete without turning the spotlight on Google. The business model that Facebook perfected – invasive technologies, manipulation, and markets for criminals to sell illicit goods and services – Google practically invented: If you don’t’ pay for the product, you are the product.
It’s time for Congress to ask Google the tough questions. How much money do you make off my personal data? How are malicious actors – jihadis, opioids dealers, hostile governments and peddlers of illicit goods and services – manipulating your platforms to undermine society and harm consumers? And how do you profit when they do it?
We need to know what they do with our private information and how aggressively they profit off its insights. We need to know how they intend to police their platforms to ensure opioids aren’t as easy to buy as shoes, or that radical extremists and hate groups can’t reach our children as simply as Dunkin Donuts. Google can’t avoid accountability. It needs to be part of the solution to ensuring that our digital platforms don’t slip into the Dark Web. That means outlining for Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and citizens specific solutions about how it will respect Americans’ privacy and not let criminals and other bad actors run free on its platforms.