Facebook, Google and Twitter can no longer pretend they don’t shape elections.
Tech companies cannot be held responsible for what people post online — that’s the argument deployed by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google whenever their services are used to promote terrorist propaganda, hate speech or other digital misinformation.
That’s no longer going to fly.
Regulators from Brussels and Berlin to Washington and elsewhere are now pushing for tech companies to take greater ownership of the reams of content posted on their digital platforms.
It’s time for Silicon Valley’s biggest brands to own up to what’s long been obvious to anybody watching closely: How they run their global empires is inherently political.
