Do Govts Have The Resolve To Resist Capitulation?

FROM B1 over what he terms the "Distributed Idea Suppression Complex" - a nebulous coalition of legacy media outlets, bureaucracies, universities and NGOs that, he said, "traditionally delimited public conversations".

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It's a narrative that conveniently overlooks Big Tech's glaring failure - issues that have troubled us for years.

Take, for example, the unchecked cyberbullying that led to the tragic suicide of Malaysian TikTok creator Rajeswary Appahu, known online as Esha, in July 2024.

Or consider the relentless spread of falsehoods that we encounter on these platforms every day. There's also the mishandling of harmful content, algorithms that seem to encourage outrage, and Meta's deliberate undermining of internal teams meant to address these problems, as whistle-blower Frances Haugen revealed in 2021.

These incidents are just the latest headlines. The problems go back to the 2010s - it would be a mistake to forget the online movement known as Gamergate that in 2014 spearheaded the harassment of women in the video-game industry.

Then there was the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal, involving the misuse of Facebook users' data for political advertising. In 2019, YouTube faced backlash over algorithms pushing viewers towards increasingly extreme content.

These aren't isolated flare-ups but systemic failures - issues that Big Tech seems more interested in hiding than fixing.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR ASIA In this new era of warmer ties between Big Tech and the White House, the question for Asia is clear: where does the region go from here?

Should governments take a cue from British Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle, who last December called for "humility" and "statecraft", urging officials to tread carefully in their dealings with Big Tech - almost treating them as sovereign powers rather than traditional corporate entities like banks or telcos?

Or should regulators stand firm and refuse to back down?

Already, there are signs of a softer stance in some parts of the world.