Farhad Manjoo wisely upshifts the discourse about Internet platforms from a purely economic footing into the realm of political suzerainty. Basically, it can be argued that by becoming so internationally dominant US platform companies – Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Uber, Microsoft, etc. – are setting global policies, leaving nation-states without effective controls in areas like commerce, publishing, and governance. [All emphasis mine.]
Farhad Manjoo, Why the World Is Drawing Battle Lines Against American Tech Giants
Until the surveillance revealed by the National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, many American tech companies were also more deferential to the American government, especially its requests for law enforcement help.
In the rest of the world, the Americanness of the Frightful Five [Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook] is often seen as a reason for fear, not comfort. In part that is because of a worry about American hegemony. The bigger these companies get, the less room they leave for local competition — and the more room for possible spying by the United States government.
But even if that idea sounds hyperbolic (but it doesn’t, right?), there is a deeper fear of usurpation through tech — a worry that these companies could grow so large and become so deeply entrenched in world economies that they could effectively make their own laws.
“What’s happening right now is the nation-state is losing its grip,” said Jane K. Winn, also a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, who studies international business transactions. “One of the hallmarks of modernity is that you have a nation-state that claims they are the exclusive source of a universal legal system that addresses all legal issues. But now people in one jurisdiction are subject to rules that come from outside the government — and often it’s companies that run these huge networks that are pushing their own rules.”
Ms. Winn pointed to Amazon as an example. The e-commerce giant sells both its own goods and those from other merchants through its marketplace. In this way, it imposes a universal set of rules on many merchants in countries in which it operates. The larger Amazon gets, the more its rules — rather than any particular nation’s — can come to be regarded as the most important regulations governing commerce. And because Amazon tends to focus on customer service rather than other values a country might want to prioritize — fraud protection or workers’ rights, say — the company could end up becoming the world’s most powerful consumer protection agency, but one that is unaccountable to some governments.
Welcome to the postnormal, where nation-states become obsolete, and not through political upheaval or conquest. Instead, the boundaries and abstractions associated with national borders blur as people’s basic affiliations shifts to platforms from places.
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/145303290492
