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European tech warrior urges Australia to stare down Google threats

Hans van Leeuwen
Hans van LeeuwenEurope correspondent

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London | European tech warrior Marietje Schaake has a message for Scott Morrison in his stoush with Google over whether it should pay media organisations for news content: don’t blink.

Ms Schaake, a former Dutch member of the European Parliament who became one of the continent’s most outspoken crusaders against the power of Big Tech, says the Australian PM should feel emboldened that Google and Facebook are threatening to cut Australia loose if he doesn’t back down.

“I hope Australian leaders would actually feel empowered by that. That they would not feel discouraged by these harsh warnings. That it confirms they are on the right track, and maybe more needs to happen to address this over-dependence on a handful of companies,” she said.

Marietje Schaake: ‘It was always about what values are baked into the technologies, and whether or not they could be safeguarded somehow, and whether or not the technologies are actually facilitating abuses.’ 

She goes further, arguing that bringing the showdown to a head – with Google making good on its threat to remove Australia from its search functions – could be a breakthrough moment.

“What if they do it? I almost hope they will, because I think it will lead to a super-interesting new opportunity for more alternatives, for more soul-searching about what is actually needed.”

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Ms Schaake, who is now a Stanford University professor and director of the Geneva-based Cyber Peace Institute, isn’t the only one avidly watching Australia’s game of chicken with Big Tech.

This week, other European parliamentarians said they would look to amend coming EU digital legislation so it includes something like Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code – which would force the likes of Google and Facebook to negotiate deals with media companies to ensure news creators get a fair share of the revenue from clicks.

A coalition of Canadian newspapers also endorsed the model last week. And Britain is setting up a digital media unit to devise and enforce a code of conduct.

But for Ms Schaake, this fight is just one front in a broader battle. It encompasses not just competition and antitrust issues, but also the very nature of how democracies manage the power of social media to influence and distort the political process.

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“I don’t think any lawmaker would get away with saying ‘we’re going to do away with Google’. But if Google says ‘we’re going to do away with Australia’, that’s an opportunity [to ask] who has the legitimate mandate to make decisions in this realm. The answer should be unequivocally, the elected representatives.”

Ms Schaake was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 for a small Dutch liberal party called D66, and her early work during the Arab Spring was about how technology was abused by authoritarian regimes to repress dissent. Later, she realised the same issues were also surfacing in democracies.

“It was always about what values are baked into the technologies, and whether or not they could be safeguarded somehow, and whether or not the technologies are actually facilitating abuses. And that’s still the question,” she said.

“If you look at the business models of the big platforms – Facebook, YouTube, Google, Amazon – their enormous power has not only disrupted markets, it has also disrupted societies. People can be moved to purchase certain things, they can be moved to vote certain ways, their trust can be eroded, divisions between people can be created. We really see how well-functioning companies from the perspective of profitability can be at increasing odds with safeguarding the rule of law and democracy.”

Dismissing Silicon Valley’s techno-utopianism – the internet as vehicle of freedom – she said there had to be “designing, governing, checks, balances, the rule of law context, in order to prevent harms and to enable benefits”.

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Whose responsibility?

Western governments first became alarmed about the power of social media when Islamic State was able to use the platforms to spread propaganda and cultivate extremism. At that time, the demand was for companies to take down extremist material, and fast.

The companies protested that they and their algorithms couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be the arbiters of what was said online. Ms Schaake agrees governments ducked their responsibility to make the difficult decisions about the limits of free speech, but she also reckons the companies were being disingenuous.

“They were already curating information. But for profit. So with a very different outlook than, let’s say, a democratic government.”

Europe and Australia, she said, had now reached the point of understanding that the potential public harms and market harms from Big Tech’s reach and dominance needed to be “more anchored in law”.

”What you see now in Europe is much more outspoken criteria and requirements on the platforms, with regard to their liability, their responsibility, their role as gatekeepers,” she said.

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The US, though, is still on the journey. The Trump-inspired riot in Washington has shaken up the debate, but Ms Schaake worries the big questions might get lost in partisanship and personalities.

The sight of Trump being exiled from Twitter, and his Parler followers banished even from the internet’s architecture, shocked European leaders.

“It confirmed for them that this was a manifestation of their outsized power. But we shouldn’t forget that the lack of intervening, the enabling of a platform to spread hatred and mobilise countless people behind certain agendas is also a manifestation of that power,” Ms Schaake said.

For her, it is not an argument about particular platforms, technologies and markets. “The starting point is that democracy needs protection and benefits all people. It’s not partisan, it’s a precondition for everybody’s quality of life. And we need to hold companies accountable wherever they may operate,” she said.

Her big fear for 2021 is that Big Tech’s formidable lobbying power will win the day. But she’s hoping the increasing like-mindedness among Western governments – evident in the reaction to the Morrison-Google stoush – can counter that.

“What I think looks very promising is several proposals – with different accents but roughly the same idea – of closer and more strategic cooperation between democratic nations worldwide, which would clearly bring Australia into the picture,” she said.

“That would really be an excellent outcome because we have lost to private power but also to authoritarian power – which I don’t have to tell anyone in Australia. It’s really important that people build and work hard to protect democracy, and don’t assume it will survive.”

Hans van Leeuwen covers British and European politics, economics and business from London. He has worked as a reporter, editor and policy adviser in Sydney, Canberra, Hanoi and London. Connect with Hans on Twitter. Email Hans at hans.vanleeuwen@afr.com

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