Kerby Anderson

The Big Four Tech Masters are Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google. They dominate the digital world and therefore have a responsibility they have been able to shirk until now.

In a recent column, Jim Geraghty says they “were not built to differentiate accurate information from inaccurate information, to dispel and counteract hateful voices, or to sniff out and stop disinformation campaigns by foreign intelligence.” Instead, they were built to make money. They never foresaw how evil people could post live steam videos of murder and other evil acts. They never foresaw how terrorists could use their networks. They never realized how complete strangers could use their platforms to send hateful messages and harass and cyberbully others.

For many years now, the Big Four “could shrug and emphasize that they were platforms, not content creators.” They could pretend they were like technicians running a printing press or like a college student playing music on the campus radio station. If you didn’t like what was printed or didn’t like the lyrics of a song, take it up with the creator not the person printing the words or playing the music.

Frankly, that argument doesn’t work any longer because these digital platforms have become news and information sites. Jim Garaghty says the Big Four have only two choices. First, they can pretend they aren’t in the news business and don’t deserve to be a trusted source of information. Americans stopped believing emails from Nigerian princes promising millions of dollars. Americans can likewise stop believing what they read on social media.

Second, the Big Four can face reality and recognize they are in the news business and start behaving accordingly. That will require some soul-searching and a level of professionalism not found in abundance inside the Big Four Tech Masters. It may be the only way they will continue to have the public’s trust.