A brutal
year: how the 'techlash' caught up with Facebook, Google and Amazon
Privacy
scandals and antitrust issues dogged social media giants and the online
retailer saw a rise in employee organizing
Kari Paul
in San Francisco
Sat 28 Dec
2019 11.00 GMTLast modified on Sat 28 Dec 2019 11.59 GMT
What goes
up must come down, and in 2019, gravity reasserted itself for the tech
industry.
After years
of relatively unchecked growth, the tech industry found itself on the receiving
end of increased scrutiny from lawmakers and the public and attacks from its
own employees.
“The whole
year has been brutal for tech companies,” said Peter Yared, chief executive
officer and founder of data compliance firm InCountry. “The techlash we have
seen in the rest of the world is just now catching up in the US – it’s been a
long time coming.”
From new
privacy legislation to internal strife, here are some of the major hurdles the
tech industry has faced in the past year.
As the 2020
presidential race intensified, tech companies faced a growing backlash over the
campaign-related content they allow on their platforms.
In October,
Facebook quietly revised its policy banning false claims in advertising to
exempt politicians, drawing fierce criticism from users, misinformation
watchdogs, and politicians. Following the change in policy, presidential
candidate Elizabeth Warren took out advertisements on Facebook purposely making
false statements to draw attention to the policy.
Democratic
lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grilled Facebook’s chief executive, Mark
Zuckerberg, over the policy change in a congressional hearing in October. “Do
you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of factchecking on
political advertisements?” Ocasio-Cortez asked, as Zuckerberg struggled to
answer. “So, you won’t take down lies or you will take down lies?”
Meanwhile,
other tech companies took the opposite stance. TikTok, whose reported 500
million users makes it one of Facebook’s largest rivals, made clear in a
blogpost in October it would not be hosting any political advertisements.
And
Facebook rival Twitter banned almost all political advertising in October.
Google stated in November it would no longer allow political advertisers to
target voters based on their political affiliations.
Investigations
threaten big tech
At one
time, tech giant acquisitions were shrugged at. But the instant skepticism that
met Google’s acquisition of Fitbit represented a shift in how regulatory
agencies are looking at big tech: investigations are coming.
Throughout
the year, tech giants faced congressional hearings on issues such as privacy,
antitrust and misinformation. The US Congress announced in June it would
investigate tech firms over anti-competitive behavior. In July, Facebook,
Google, and Amazon faced a grilling before the House subcommittee regarding
antitrust. A week later, the US justice department announced it was opening a
broad antitrust review into Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Apple.
Shortly
after, Facebook said it had agreed to pay a record $5bn penalty in the US for
mishandling user data in the Cambridge Analytica breach.
Later in
2019, Facebook’s Zuckerberg spent hours in the hot seat as Congress members
grilled him over the social media giant’s privacy practices and its plans to
launch a digital currency.
While the
hearings did not immediately result in legislative action, the tone of
questioning underscored growing bipartisan animosity against tech executives.
Senator
Sherrod Brown of Ohio said Facebook showed “breathtaking arrogance” in
attempting to launch a digital financial service after a number of major
privacy scandals and called Facebook “dangerous”.
New privacy
laws loom
In 2019, US
lawmakers and regulatory agencies began to direct at tech firms the kind of
criticism that has been advancing in the European Union for years. In the year
since the the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in May
2018, the US has started to look at its own regulation addressing what data is
collected on its citizens.
“Throughout
the world, you see that people are fed up and you see more and more laws
popping up,” Yared said. “And it’s coming to the US now.”
As the
average American became more aware of the privacy issues and the magnitude of
data collection, calls for legislation intensified, said Hayley Tsukayama, a
legislative activist at the not-for-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Major scandals such as Cambridge Analytica and Amazon’s growing network of Ring
doorbells have caused voters to request more action from their lawmakers.
“We have
heard from many lawmakers saying they introduced legislation due to calls they
were getting from constituents,” she said. “In a lot of cases, people will say
they do not like what Google or Facebook is doing, they find an ad creepy or
are upset about an invasion of privacy.”
The calls
for better privacy protections have grown steadily each year and show no sign
of slowing down, said Chris Babel, chief executive officer of privacy
compliance firm TrustArc. Consumers are increasingly aware of privacy
violations after their own data was mishandled by Equifax, Facebook and in
other massive breaches.
“Privacy
has become an even bigger theme in 2019,” Babel said. “Things have
fundamentally changed – consumers care more about their personal information
than they did in the past, and businesses do, too.”
In 2019,
over 150 pieces of legislation on consumer data were considered in the US on
the state and federal level as criticism over the companies’ growing reach and
power intensifies.
Nevada,
Maine, Washington, New York, Texas, Oregon and Maryland all passed laws related
to data breach notification requirements, privacy and cybersecurity in 2019.
The
California Consumer Privacy Act, which was passed in 2018, was finalized in
2019 and is set to go into effect on 1 January 2020. It is set to enact privacy
regulations similar to Europe’s GDPR, giving consumers the right to know what
data is kept on them and request it be deleted.
Among
consumers and legislators alike, 2019 brought a growing awareness that the
explosion of the gig economy has come with huge challenges for workers.
California
attempted to address that in September 2019 when it passed a landmark workers’
rights bill threatening to upend the gig economy. The bill, known as AB5, will
change the way contract workers are classified. With tech giants including Uber
and Lyft headquartered in California, the bill is likely to resonate far beyond
state lines.
When the
law goes into effect in January 2020, it will implement a three-part standard
for determining whether workers are properly classified as independent
contractors, requiring that (a) they are free from the company’s control, (b)
they are doing work that isn’t central to the company’s business and (c) they
have an independent business in that industry.
Gig economy
startups, including Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have pledged millions of dollars
against the bill, threatening to fund a ballot initiative to counteract it in
2020.
Tech
companies also faced intense backlash from within – the year of 2019 was
“pivotal for worker organizing”, said Shona Clarkson, an organizer at Gig
Workers Rising said.
The rise in
activism marked a breaking point for the gig economy, Clarkson noted, with
workers increasingly uniting to address workplace issues affecting employees at
all levels.
“This was a
year we saw workers rising up across the board,” Clarkson said. “It is long
overdue – workers have been suffering within tech since the industry began, and
now we are seeing the rising up of workers who are building the power necessary
to win.”
At Google,
repercussions from internal protests over sexual harassment policies that began
in November 2018 continued into 2019. Workers at fundraising startup
Kickstarter organized to fight for workers rights. Gig workers at Instacart and
Uber also organized strikes to fight for better pay and benefits.
Companies
have responded by allegedly cracking down on worker activists. Google hired an
anti-union security firm and fired at least five employees involved in
organizing. Two Kickstarter employees allege they were fired over their
activism.
The
protests were not only over worker treatment, but technology’s responsibility
to larger political issues. In June, workers at online furnishings retailer
Wayfair walked out of the job to protest the company’s contracts with detention
centers for immigrants. In July, Amazon workers and activists protested the
company’s contracts with government agencies.
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