A shocking moment of the Capitol crisis was the swift reaction of the largest international companies —Big Tech—which in an unprecedented move unanimously blocked Trump’s activities on the net. Facebook and Twitter suspended both his personal and POTUS’ (the president of the United States’) accounts. His followers migrated to Parler, a platform amenable to them, only to find that AWS(Amazon Web Services) discontinued the hosting. Parler vowed to resume business in a week, later to confess impotency to deliver because Google Play and Apple App Store too banned them and no provider —of cloud, text messages, advertising— dared to conflict with Google. (They afterward reopened on Russian servers.)

A vivacious debate ensued on whether Big Tech may restrain freedom of speech, moreover so of an incumbent head of state. Lawyers busied themselves with contending for rival theories. What is the ‘law of the land’ in social media? The case for private law is clear. The user accepts the terms of service, including account suspension in infringement of the company’s policy/values. However, are private terms forceful even if the case affects constitutional rights? Some said that the social media as legitimate censors must be accountable for what the users publish —which in the end Parler was held, by the way. Yet another group argued that the First Amendment of the US Constitution, a bulwark of free speech, protects the citizens from the government, not from free enterprises. They all got the wrong end of the stick by dodging a critical question, namely, who protects you from Big Tech’s potential abuse?

Only Big Tech’s goodwill —minds the commercial meaning. Constitutional rights are a legal fiction in whose virtue a government protects the citizens from itself. The fictitious artifact to provide such protection is division of powers. The judiciary, a governmental branch independent of the executive and funded to the effect by the legislature still a third branch, guarantees the protection. If the main actors faithfully believe the fiction is real, it’s real. Nothing of the sort exists beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. No such protection assists the user of social networks. Conspiracy theorists found a fertile ground to crop ‘evidence’ of the concerted rule by a few plutocrats chasing unspeakable ends. They colluded, didn’t they?

Less conspicuous though momentous was Big Tech’s self-regulation. After all, they ousted Parler —one of them— from the market. In the early 1900s, the Standard Oil allegedly resorted to dynamiting the reluctant competitors’ oil wells. Now Big Tech only had to activate terms of service and implied threats to produce the effect. Still more exceptionally, the stance was due to an ideological bias pursuant to ‘political correctness’ rather than dictated by a plan to restrain competition.

Now, the crucial question is: Did Big Tech interfere with the political process or did they support it? Seemingly the latter, because Trump’s supporters lost all legitimacy by storming Capitol Hill. However, Big Tech took sides since Election Day in warning Trump’s posts off. The US Supreme Court said the election was fair, and that’s okay. Yet suppose SCOTUS(the Supreme Court of the United States) misread the situation so that hypothetically the American people’s choice — even if for a slight difference— was Trump. The Big Tech didn’t hesitate. They were for Biden. Because of hunger for money? Yes, of course, but money isn’t either with Biden or Trump per se; it’s with the global market. And who knows better than Big Tech what the global market’s choice is? Big data and AI are in their hands. That is a noteworthy case of revealed information in decision making. While pockets of opinion here and there may think otherwise, the global netizens abhorred Trump’s rule, which afforded a lighthouse for Big Tech to sail the stormy waters. In a tie-break, Big Tech voted for Biden on behalf of non-American stakeholders of freedom and democracy. His behavior in the job will be whatever he thinks fit, but he is a global president of sorts. Such meddling in domestic politics frightens the western governments, naturally. That’s why some of them now try to have a tighter grip on Big Tech through any means at their reach.

(Enrique Viaña is Professor of Economics, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain.)

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