4. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge,” 89 (italics mine).
5. Ashlee Vance, “Facebook: The Making of 1 Billion Users,” Bloomberg.com, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-10-04/facebook-the-making-of-1-billion-users.
6. Tom Simonite, “What Facebook Knows,” MIT Technology Review, June 13, 2012, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/428150/what-facebook-knows.
7. See Vance, “Facebook: The Making of 1 Billion Users.”
8. Derek Thompson, “Google’s CEO: ‘The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists,’” Atlantic, October 1, 2010, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googles-ceo-the-laws-are-written-by-lobbyists/63908.
9. Satya Nadella, “Satya Nadella: Build 2017,” News Center, May 10, 2017, https://news.microsoft.com/speeches/satya-nadella-build-2017.
10. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 939–40.
11. These data are drawn from my own compilation of General Motors market capitalization and employment data from 1926 to 2008, Google from 2004 to 2016, and Facebook from 2012 to 2016. All market capitalization values are adjusted for inflation to 2016 dollars, as per the Consumer Price Index from Federal Reserve Economic Data, Economic Research Division, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The sources used to compile these data include Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ (Google Market Capitalization and Headcount), Wharton Research Data Services—CRSP (General Motors Market Capitalization), Standard & Poor’s Compustat (General Motors Headcount), Thomas Eikon (Facebook Market Capitalization), Company Annual Reports (General Motors Headcount), and SEC Filings (Facebook Headcount).
12. Opinion Research Corporation, “Is Big Business Essential for the Nation’s Growth and Expansion?” ORC Public Opinion Index (August 1954); Opinion Research Corporation, “Which of These Comes Closest to Your Impression of the Business Setup in This Country?” ORC Public Opinion Index (January 1955); Opinion Research Corporation, “Now Some Questions About Large Companies. Do You Agree or Disagree on Each of These?… Large Companies Are Essential for the Nation’s Growth and Expansion,” ORC Public Opinion Index (June 1959). A 1951 report found that the American public lauded big business for job creation, its effectiveness as a mass producer, the development and improvement of products, payment of big taxes, and support of education. See “Poll Finds Public on Industry’s Side,” New York Times, July 15, 1951. A 1966 Harris poll reported 44 percent of Americans crediting the federal government with the nation’s prosperity and 34 percent crediting big business. In 1968, when CEO pay was about 24 times that of the average worker, 64 percent of Americans said that business leadership was the best it had ever been. See Louis Harris & Associates, “Which Two or Three Best Describe Most Business Corporation Leaders in the Country?” (April 1966); Louis Harris & Associates, “Compared with What We Have Produced in the Past in This Country, Do You Feel That Our Present Leadership in the Field of Business Is Better, Worse or About the Same as We Have Produced in the Past?” (June 1968). For more background, see also Louis Galambos, The Public Image of Big Business in America, 1880–1940: A Quantitative Study in Social Change (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
13. See Alfred D. Chandler, “The Enduring Logic of Industrial Success,” Harvard Business Review, March 1, 1990, https://hbr.org/1990/03/the-enduring-logic-of-industrial-success; Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson, “Management Practices, Relational Contracts, and the Decline of General Motors,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28, no. 1 (2014): 49–72, https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.28.1.49.
14. David H. Autor et al., “The Fall of the Labor Share and the Rise of Superstar Firms” (SSRN Scholarly Paper, Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, May 22, 2017), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2971352. See also Michael Chui and James Manyika, “Competition at the Digital Edge: ‘Hyperscale’ Businesses,” McKinsey Quarterly, March 2015.
15. One hundred more data centers are expected to be online by late 2018. Microsoft invested $20 billion in 2017, and in 2018 Facebook announced plans to invest $20 billion in a new hyperscale data center in Atlanta. According to one industry report, hyperscale firms are also building the world’s networks, especially subsea cables, which means that “a large portion of the global internet traffic is now running through private networks owned or operated by hyperscalers.” In 2016 Facebook and Google teamed up to build a new subsea cable between the US and Hong Kong, described as the highest-capacity transpacific route to date. See João Marges Lima, “Hyperscalers Taking Over the World at an Unprecedented Scale,” Data Economy, April 11, 2017, https://data-economy.com/hyperscalers-taking-world-unprecedented-scale; João Marges Lima, “Facebook, Google Partners in 12,800Km Transpacific Cable Linking US, China,” Data Economy, October 13, 2016, https://data-economy.com/facebook-google-partners-in-12800km-transpacific-cable-linking-us-china; João Marges Lima, “Facebook Could Invest up to $20bn in a Single Hyperscale Data Centre Campus,” Data Economy, January 23, 2018, https://data-economy.com/facebook-invest-20bn-single-hyperscale-data-centre-campus.
16. T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 22.
17. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution, 222.
18. Breen, XVI–XVII.
19. Breen, 235–39.
20. See Breen, 20.
21. See Breen, 299.
22. Breen, 325.
23. Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2012).
24. Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 313–14. Historian Jack Goldstone observes that the magnitude of Britain’s parliamentary reforms defused the pressure for more violent change, creating a more durable and prosperous democracy. Like Acemoglu and Robinson, he concludes that “national decay” is typically associated with a social pattern in which elites do not identify their interests with those of the public, suggesting the danger of precisely the kind of structural independence enjoyed by surveillance capitalists. See Jack A. Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 481, 487; see also Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon, 1993), 3–39.
25. Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, “The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission,” 1975, http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf.
26. Ryan Mac, Charlie Warzel, and Alex Kantrowitz, “Growth at Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection in 2016 Memo—and Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed,” Buzzfeed, March 29, 2018, https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook-executive-defended-data?utm_term=.stWyyGQnb#.cnkEEaN0v.
27. Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, “Inside the Two Years That Shook Facebook—and the World,” Wired, February 12, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell.
28. Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow, “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31, no. 2 (2017): 211–36.
29. “Nielsen/Netratings Reports Topline U.S. Data for July 2007,” Nielsen/Netratings, July 2007.
30. Consumer Watchdog, “Liars and Loans: How Deceptive Advertisers Use Google,” February 2011; Jay Greene, “Feds Shut Down High-Tech Mortgage Scammers,” CBSNews.com, November 16, 2011.
31. US Department of Justice, “Google Forfeits $500 Million Generated by Online Ads & Prescription Drug Sales by Canadian Online Pharmacies,” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/google-forfeits-500-million-generated-online-ads-prescription-drug-sales-canadian-online.
32. Michela Del Vicario et al., “The Spreading of Misinformation Online,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 3 (2016): 554–59; Solomon Messing and Sean J. Westwood, “How Social Media Introduces Biases in Selecting and Processing News Content,” Pew Research Center, April 8, 2
012.
33. See Paul Mozur and Mark Scott, “Fake News in U.S. Election? Elsewhere, That’s Nothing New,” New York Times, November 17, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/technology/fake-news-on-facebook-in-foreign-elections-thats-not-new.html.
34. Catherine Buni, “The Secret Rules of the Internet,” Verge, April 13, 2016, https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderator-history-youtube-facebook-reddit-censorship-free-speech.
35. Madeleine Varner and Julia Angwin, “Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters,’” ProPublica, September 14, 2017, https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-enabled-advertisers-to-reach-jew-haters.
36. See the instructive discussion in Buni, “The Secret Rules of the Internet”; Nick Hopkins, “Revealed: Facebook’s Internal Rulebook on Sex, Terrorism and Violence,” Guardian, May 21, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/21/revealed-facebook-internal-rulebook-sex-terrorism-violence?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA +-+Collections+2017&utm_term=227190&subid=17990030&CMP=GT_US_collection; Nick Hopkins, “Facebook Moderators: A Quick Guide to Their Job and Its Challenges,” Guardian, May 21, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/21/facebook-moderators-quick-guide-job-challenges; Kate Klonick, “The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech,” Harvard Law Review 131 (March 20, 2017), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2937985.
37. Michael Nunez, “Facebook’s Fight Against Fake News Was Undercut by Fear of Conservative Backlash,” Gizmodo, November 14, 2016, http://gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-was-undercut-by-fear-1788808204.
38. Varner and Angwin, “Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters.’”
39. Alex Kantrowitz, “Google Allowed Advertisers to Target ‘Jewish Parasite,’ ‘Black People Ruin Everything,’” BuzzFeed, September 15, 2017, https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/google-allowed-advertisers-to-target-jewish-parasite-black.
40. Jack Nicas, “Big Brands Boost Fake News Sites,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2016; Olivia Solon, “Google’s Bad Week: YouTube Loses Millions as Advertising Row Reaches US,” Guardian, March 25, 2017, http://www.the guardian.com/technology/2017/mar/25/google-youtube-advertising-extremist-content-att-verizon; Alexi Mostrous, “YouTube Hate Preachers Share Screens with Household Names,” Times, March 17, 2017, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-preachers-share-screens-with-household-names-kdmpm kkjk; Alexi Mostrous, “Advertising Giant Drops Google in Storm Over Extremist Videos,” Times, March 18, 2017, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/advertising-giant-drops-google-in-storm-over-extremist-videos-2klgvv8d5.
41. Shannon Bond, “Trade Group Warns on Google Ad Backlash ‘Crisis,’” Financial Times, March 24, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/0936a49e-b521-369e-9d22-c194ed1c0d48; Matthew Garrahan, “AT&T Pulls Some Ads from Google After YouTube Controversy,” Financial Times, March 22, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/254d330d-f3d1-3ac2-ab8d-761083d6976a; Sapna Maheshwari and Daisuke Wakabayashi, “AT&T and Johnson & Johnson Pull Ads from YouTube,” New York Times, March 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/business/atampt-and-johnson-amp-johnson-pull-ads-from-youtube-amid-hate-speech-concerns.html; Rob Davies, “Google Braces for Questions as More Big-Name Firms Pull Adverts,” Guardian, March 19, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/19/google-braces-for-questions-as-more-big-name-firms-pull-adverts.
42. Olivia Solon, “Facebook’s Fake News: Mark Zuckerberg Rejects ‘Crazy Idea’ That It Swayed Voters,” Guardian, November 11, 2016,, https://www.the guardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-us-election-mark-zuckerberg-donald-trump.
43. Guy Chazan, “Berlin Looks at Fines for Facebook with Fake News Law,” Financial Times, December 16, 2016; Guy Chazan, “Germany Cracks Down on Social Media Over Fake News,” Financial Times, March 14, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/c10aa4f8-08a5-11e7-97d1-5e720a26771b; Jim Pickard, “Amber Rudd Urges Action from Internet Groups on Extremist Content,” Financial Times, March 26, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/f652c9bc-120d-11e7-80f4-13e067d5072c; Alexandra Topping, Mark Sweney, and Jamie Grierson, “Google Is ‘Profiting from Hatred’ Say MPs in Row Over Adverts,” Guardian, March 17, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/17/google-is-profiting-from-hatred-say-mps-in-row-over-adverts; Sabrina Siddiqui, “‘From Heroes to Villains’: Tech Industry Faces Bipartisan Backlash in Washington,” Guardian, September 26, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/26/tech-industry-washington-google-amazon-apple-facebook; Nancy Scola and Josh Meyer, “Google, Facebook May Have to Reveal Deepest Secrets,” Politico, October 1, 2017, http://politi.co/2yBtppQ; Paul Lewis, “Senator Warns YouTube Algorithm May Be Open to Manipulation by ‘Bad Actors,’” Guardian, February 5, 2018, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/05/senator-warns-youtube-algorithm-may-be-open-to-manipulation-by-bad-actors.
44. Madhumita Murgia and David Bond, “Google Apologises to Advertisers for Extremist Content on YouTube,” Financial Times, March 20, 2017; Sam Levin, “Mark Zuckerberg: I Regret Ridiculing Fears Over Facebook’s Effect on Election,” Guardian, September 27, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/27/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-2016-election-fake-news; Robert Booth and Alex Hern, “Facebook Admits Industry Could Do More to Combat Online Extremism,” Guardian, September 20, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/20/facebook-admits-industry-could-do-more-to-combat-online-extremism; Scott Shane and Mike Isaac, “Facebook to Turn Over Russian-Linked Ads to Congress,” New York Times, September 21, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/technology/face book-russian-ads.html; David Cohen, “Mark Zuckerberg Seeks Forgiveness in Yom Kippur Facebook Post,” Adweek, October 2, 2017, http://www.adweek.com/digital/mark-zuckerberg-yom-kippur-facebook-post; “Exclusive Interview with Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg,” Axios, October 12, 2017, https://www.axios.com/exclusive-interview-facebook-sheryl-sandberg-2495538841.html; Kevin Roose, “Facebook’s Frankenstein Moment,” New York Times, September 21, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/technology/face book-frankenstein-sandberg-ads.html.
45. David Cohen, “Mark Zuckerberg Seeks Forgiveness in Yom Kippur Facebook Post.”
46. Roose, “Facebook’s Frankenstein Moment.”
47. Booth and Hern, “Facebook Admits Industry Could Do More to Combat Online Extremism.”
48. See Murgia and Bond, “Google Apologises to Advertisers.”
49. Mark Bergen, “Google Is Losing to the ‘Evil Unicorns,’” Bloomberg Businessweek, November 27, 2017.
50. On modest adjustments, see Mike Isaac, “Facebook and Other Tech Companies Seek to Curb Flow of Terrorist Content,” New York Times, December 5, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/technology/facebook-and-other-tech-companies-seek-to-curb-flow-of-terrorist-content.html; Daisuke Wakabayashi, “Google Cousin Develops Technology to Flag Toxic Online Comments,” New York Times, February 23, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/technology/google-jigsaw-monitor-toxic-online-comments.html; Sapna Maheshwari, “YouTube Revamped Its Ad System. AT&T Still Hasn’t Returned,” New York Times, February 12, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/business/media/att-youtube-advertising.html; Madhumita Murgia, “Google Reveals Response to YouTube Ad Backlash,” Financial Times, March 21, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/46475974-0e30-11e7-b030-76895439 4623; Heather Timmons, “Google Executives Are Floating a Plan to Fight Fake News on Facebook and Twitter,” Quartz, https://qz.com/1195872/google-face book-twitter-fake-news-chrome; Elizabeth Dwoskin and Hamza Shaban, “Facebook Will Now Ask Users to Rank News Organizations They Trust,” Washington Post, January 19, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/01/19/facebook-will-now-ask-its-users-to-rank-news-organizations-they-trust; Hamza Shaban, “Mark Zuckerberg Vows to Remove Violent Threats from Facebook,” Washington Post, August 16, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/08/16/mark-zuckerberg-vows-to-remove-violent-threats-from-facebook. On moves to quash meaningful reform, see Hannah Albarazi, “Zuckerberg Votes Aga
inst Shareholder Push for Fake News Transparency,” CBS SFBayArea, June 2, 2017, http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/06/02/zuckerberg-shareholder-fake-news-transparency; Ethan Baron, “Google Parent Alphabet Gender-Pay Proposal Dead on Arrival,” Mercury News, June 7, 2017.
51. “Facebook Reports First Quarter 2018 Results.”
52. Adam Mosseri, “News Feed FYI: Bringing People Closer Together,” Facebook Newsroom, January 11, 2018, https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together.
53. Sapna Maheshwari, “As Facebook Changes Its Feed, Advertisers See Video Ambitions,” New York Times, January 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/business/media/facebook-video-advertising.html.
54. Thomas Paine, The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, ed. William M. Van der Weyde (New Rochelle, NY: Thomas Paine Historical Society, 1925), 6:97.
55. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 2006), 99.
56. Mark Zuckerberg, “Building Global Community,” February 16, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10154544292806634.
57. Karissa Bell, “Zuckerberg Removed a Line About Monitoring Private Messages from His Facebook Manifesto,” Mashable, February 16, 2017, http://mashable.com/2017/02/16/mark-zuckerberg-manifesto-ai.
58. Heather Kelly, “Mark Zuckerberg Explains Why He Just Changed Facebook’s Mission,” CNNMoney, June 22, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/22/technology/facebook-zuckerberg-interview/index.html.
59. Pippa Norris, “Is Western Democracy Backsliding? Diagnosing the Risks,” Harvard Kennedy School, March 2017, https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/western-democracy-backsliding-diagnosing-risks; Erik Voeten, “Are People Really Turning Away from Democracy?” (SSRN Scholarly Paper, Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, December 8, 2016), https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2882878; Amy C. Alexander and Christian Welzel, “The Myth of Deconsolidation: Rising Liberalism and the Populist Reaction,” Journal of Democracy, April 28, 2017, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/media/Journal%20of%20Democracy%20Web%20 Exchange%20-%20Alexander%20and%20Welzel.pdf; Ronald Inglehart, “The Danger of Deconsolidation: How Much Should We Worry?” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 3 (2016), https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/danger-deconsolidation-how-much-should-we-worry; Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Signs of Deconsolidation,” Journal of Democracy 28, no. 1 (2017); Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, “Democracy’s Victory Is Not Preordained. Inglehart and Welzel Reply,” Foreign Affairs 88, no. 4 (2009): 157–59; Roberto Stefan Foa, “The End of the Consolidation Paradigm—a Response to Our Critics,” Journal of Democracy, April 28, 2017.
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