Welcome to Techville: Social media companies claim to want global citizenship. What they really want is national sovereignty
By Jeremy Rosen
Social media and tech companies have long claimed to be harbingers of a new global citizenship. In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg described Facebook as giving “people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.” The Meta mission statement includes “bring[ing] the world closer together.” Likewise, in 2023, Elon Musk described X as “creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.”
It is understandable why these companies appear to be promoters of global citizenship. They have broken down global silos connecting people from all over the world. These connections have helped spur or amplify important social movements like Black Lives Matter and the Arab Spring. In a world rife with inequality, political polarization, and threats to democracy, global citizenship may seem appealing. But a closer look at the behavior of this loose confederation of companies positions their aspirations less towards global governing bodies and more towards a collective of nations that seek sovereignty and expansion of capital through open trade. Let’s call these nations “Techville.”
Techville, like other wealthy nations around the world, have much to gain from hyper-globalization. Accordingly, Techville diplomats focus on strategies to reduce barriers imposed by other countries that might inhibit extracting resources (user data) to sell. In the United States, tech companies recently spent nearly $277 million on lobbying and millions more on campaign contributions to block the American Innovation and Choice Online Act which would have given federal agencies the right to restrain large tech companies for committing certain violations. Big Tech spent additional millions lobbying against the Open Apps Market Act which would have promoted competition in the tech sector.
In the spirit of globalization, Techville lobbyists have taken their efforts to weaken worker protections, stifle competitive markets, and remove any sense of privacy and liability far beyond the halls of the U.S. Congress. At the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework negotiations (IPEF) in Australia, representatives from companies including Google and IBM sought to reduce domestic regulation and enforcement of antitrust laws. At the Singapore round of negotiations 34 of the 40 presenters had ties to tech. Likewise, Techville lobbyists tried to hijack the World Trade Organization's Joint Statement Initiative on E-Commerce Negotiations to “protect monopoly power and sabotage regulation,” according to Melinda St. Louis, Director of Global Trade Watch.
In a troubling trend, many countries are buying in as Techville jockeys for global political power. Countries are quite literally assigning foreign ambassadors to the industry. In 2017, Denmark became the first country to do so but has since been followed by France, Australia, and the United Kingdom, among others. According to Casper Klygne, a Technology diplomat posted in Silicon Valley,“These companies have moved from being companies with commercial interests to actually becoming de facto foreign policy actors.” But therein lies the issue. All companies participating in the global economy have foreign policy interests, but that should not change their status as corporations that governments must regulate.
Techville lobbyists and their allies argue that any legal measure to regulate tech will “give a free pass to foreign countries” to stifle “American competitiveness,” a direct contradiction of their calls for global citizenship. This reasoning and the lack of decision-making power for developing countries should evoke memories of the hyper-globalization efforts of the 1990s such as the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement. This agreement allowed powerful companies to leverage intellectual property rights to increase monopoly power. The strategy is also similar to that of pharmaceutical companies’ pursuit to protect monopoly powers and keep drug prices high. We have seen this before - corporations behaving like sovereign nations on the global stage. And like emergent nations during globalization in the 1990s, those who are not citizens of Techville will suffer from the economic and social harms.
In the end, large tech companies cannot have it both ways. They cannot claim to be global governing bodies and act as sovereign nations. In fact, they should not be either. Tech companies are just that -companies - whose main concern is pleasing shareholders by making profits. That is why the U.S. Congress, countries abroad, and global institutions must draw a firm line and treat these entities as corporations. Legally, that means establishing and enforcing strict antitrust, anti-monopoly, and privacy laws.
Fortunately, regulation may be on the horizon. The European Union, for example, implemented the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act in 2023 which reduces abusive behavior by powerful tech firms and protects online user rights. In the U.S. Republicans and Democrats support anti-trust and privacy laws. Globally, the Biden administration suspended IPEF talks, citing the need for Congress to establish stronger regulations on tech. It appears that some in power may finally realize that Techville does not exist.