{"id":57991,"date":"2019-05-13T13:48:28","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T17:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=57991"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:55:48","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:55:48","slug":"haggart-the-fix-for-facebook-and-other-tech-giants-is-difficult-but-simple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2019\/05\/haggart-the-fix-for-facebook-and-other-tech-giants-is-difficult-but-simple\/","title":{"rendered":"HAGGART: The fix for Facebook and other tech giants is difficult, but simple"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock, wrote a <a href=\"https:\/\/ottawacitizen.com\/technology\/theres-a-solution-to-our-facebook-problem-and-its-mind-bogglingly-simple\/wcm\/224520a3-e8fb-4e23-adf4-367d14dc0475\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">piece recently published in the\u00a0<em>Ottawa Citizen<\/em><\/a>\u00a0outlining why only government is capable of bringing\u00a0monopolistic or socially harmful tech companies to heel.<\/p>\n<p>Haggart writes:<\/p>\n<p><em>There\u2019s something about global tech platforms that causes people to lose all sense of perspective.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>These platforms have established\u00a0monopolies over online advertising,\u00a0routinely kill off potential competitors, and\u00a0use their dominant market position in one market to enter other markets. And we shouldn\u2019t forget that they have\u00a0played a role in a\u00a0genocide, contributed to the\u00a0amplification and normalization of white nationalist terrorism\u00a0and to the\u00a0anti-vaxxer movement. Our insatiable desire for cute cat photos, in other words, has a body count.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Yet, when it comes to possible solutions to these obvious problems, so many simply freeze. The global reach of these companies and the bedazzling newness of seemingly magical technology creates a form of policy paralysis. Both Minister of Democratic Institutions\u00a0Karina Gould\u00a0and Public Safety Minister\u00a0Ralph Goodale\u00a0have threatened legislation against the tech giants, although with very little substantive follow-through beyond asking the tech giants to please act better.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Such impotence, while understandable, is unnecessary. What tech companies can accomplish is pretty mind-boggling, but the governance problem they pose is nothing new.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/ottawacitizen.com\/technology\/theres-a-solution-to-our-facebook-problem-and-its-mind-bogglingly-simple\/wcm\/224520a3-e8fb-4e23-adf4-367d14dc0475\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock, wrote a piece recently published in the\u00a0Ottawa Citizen\u00a0outlining why only government is capable of bringing\u00a0monopolistic or socially harmful tech companies to heel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,6,38],"tags":[3445,2006,5694,42,118],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57993,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57991\/revisions\/57993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}