Tech Buzzwords

Only unregulated companies operating at a massive scale can solve the problems created when companies operate unregulated at a massive scale.

For example, see Facebook's response in 2018 to questions from Congress regarding removing fraud and abuse on their platform.

They claim that they will solve the problems created by the scale at which they operate by throwing money at the problem...

We’re doubling the number of people working on safety and security from 10,000 last year to over 20,000 this year. We expect these investments to impact our profitability.

...and by developing new artificial intelligence technology...

Over the past year, we’ve gotten increasingly better at finding and disabling fake accounts. We now block millions of fake accounts each day as people try to create them—and before they’ve done any harm. This is thanks to improvements in machine learning and artificial intelligence, which can proactively identify suspicious behavior at a scale that was not possible before—without needing to look at the content itself.

The implication is that only they have the capital to develop the AI necessary to tackle the problems occurring on their platforms.

What is not addressed is whether these problems would require such massive capital investments if the companies operated at a smaller scale.

In response to the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government passed The Dodd Frank Act which required banks to increase capital reserves and reduce leverage ratios, i.e., to scale down.

After causing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the government decided that the societal costs of having banks operating at a scale that was "too big to fail" outweighed the costs of additional financial regulation.

A too-big-to-fail firm is one whose size, complexity, interconnectedness, and critical functions are such that, should the firm go unexpectedly into liquidation, the rest of the financial system and the economy would face severe adverse consequences. -- Ben Bernake

TBTR implies that the societal benefits of tech companies operating at massive scales outweigh the costs of the harassment, bullying, fraud, conspiracy theories, revenge porn, pedophelia, racism, misogyny, violence and genocide that are perpetrated on these platforms.

An alternative argument is that companies shouldn't be able to build products if they can't ensure the safety of the people who use them. 🤔