Amazon, Facebook, and Google: Too big to tolerate. Too big to stop. | LinkedIn

From a David Kirkpatrick reality check; for a review of several related recent books, see You Are the Product (London Review of Books) and Who Owns the Internet? (The New Yorker)

"Here’s why Mark Zuckerberg cannot run for president any time soon even if he wanted to. If he did, it would highlight a simple and disturbing fact. The company, if it chose, could engineer the results of any election in the world. Facebook controls the information flow to a huge percentage of the citizens in most of the democratic world, including the United States. Unless and until Zuckerberg takes concrete action to make the way his service works more transparent to the world, to run for office would invite scrutiny he has to avoid. The same holds true for his high-profile deputy Sheryl Sandberg, whose political ambitions have been the subject of speculation for considerably longer.

Facebook and Google present a dilemma to the world. Billions depend on them for communication, entertainment, and information. They have vast influence on society, including, it increasingly appears, some very unpalatable effects on social dialogue and politics. But they answer to nobody but themselves. And nobody inside or outside of the companies really has a good idea what we as a society should do about it."

Amazon, Facebook, and Google: Too big to tolerate. Too big to stop. | LinkedIn