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When power is consolidated among entities that are not accountable to democratic institutions, the outcomes are sure to be catastrophic. Big Tech’s outsized influence has long been a topic of indifference where legislative bodies — both conservative and liberal — saw them as harbingers of great boons to society, not realizing that tech imparts upon its own biases, and in this particular moment in history, they’ve been largely misaligned with the public’s best interest.
To that end, American legislature saw fit to have top executives from the Big Four testify under oath about all that has propelled them beyond reproach–anti-competitive behavior is just the tip of the iceberg here. The air of neutrality that Big Tech often likes to project is perhaps an accidental side-effect of their many technologies being so opaque to outside observers–but just because they’re sometimes just as unknowable to legislators as they are to the very engineers making those products, doesn’t mean they’re not to uphold a sense of civil responsibility when conceiving them; especially when the purported goal is the greater good.
But to understand first how Big Tech got here, a tally of their greatest sins is in order. Amazon utilized their massive market…
