The Corporate Control Congress Wants
Big Tech has a tremendous influence, positive and negative, that Congress is gunning to control.
When I ran for Congress, I would point out how important technology was in our day to day lives, but that no one running for Congress, and I would argue, in Congress, really got the importance of getting any legislation right. Big Tech, Little Tech, the wires and waves connecting our homes are all still in a stage of rapid transformation. The foundation is there: with binary counting, 64 bit processors, random access memory, solid state storage, and low power wireless communication. You could argue this is like the steel that used to run out of the Allegheny and Ohio river valleys, powered by Appalachian coal. The innovation happens on top of those foundations, with sky scrapers and freeways. We’re at the innovation stage of computing, where we’re building on a foundation to remake our society.
Every big corporation running foundational technology, like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon, has the ability to allow for immense creativity, or crush competition and stop innovation. Now that they’re all big, they’re going to start stopping innovation through regulation, and they’re going to hurt us all.
Apple is the biggest corporation by market capitalization, or the number of shares times the cost of those shares, but it’s also the most influential in our lives. Most people have some form of a smart phone, and all smart phones, iPhone or not, have been directly influenced by Apple’s design decisions. Phones used to have physical keyboards until the flat slab of glass became vogue following the iPhone’s introduction.
When you’re a massive company, there are all sorts of ways you affect society. One interesting effect is the businesses built up around Apple’s platforms, such as App Developers. The first iPhone didn’t have any extra apps built since it was a simple version of MacOS. Many Mac developers figured out ways to build apps like they did on the Mac. Within a year, there was an official way to get an app for on an iPhone, complete with a way to sell them. Quickly, especially with so many devices out there, you could publish an app for $1 and with enough sales, become a millionaire. I was one of the developers hoping to make it, and I’m still waiting.
One aspect of getting an app onto the App Store, which is the only way sanctioned by Apple, is App Review. This has always been described as a way to prevent malware, but really, it's a way for Apple to control what gets on their platform. Usually, if you paint between the lines of Apple’s rules, you’re fine. But if you try to use a different way to collect money from your customers, such as donations to a church or a school, you would be banned from selling your app on the store. Epic games tried a move to sell their own in-app themes and customizations with their own credit card processing code, and they were banned completely, lost their suit with Apple, and will likely never be allowed back on the App Store.
There is nothing illegal with coming up with rules, and then enforcing them. But it shapes behavior. One rule early on in the guidelines was “don’t complain to the press” about a decision. This was supposed to mean that you, as a developer, shouldn’t say anything or complain about your app being flagged during review, as your app could get completely pulled from the App Store, and hurt your business. If the rules arbitrarily changed, there was no way to get your problem fixed, other than begging a faceless corporation change. Ironically, a few developers risked complaining about their problems, got what they wanted, and now the only solution is to go to the press if you run into a bad situation. Look at the service called Basecamp, which was getting squeezed by Apple for a new product they were launching. They very vocally went against Apple and were able to get the decision to not allow their app in the store rescinded.
I’ve even changed my career, moving away from developing apps to focusing on websites, since there is less chance of companies being able to control your business. Even big, happy brands that have a popular followings have the ability to shape our society. Now that they’re in control, Congress has seen how much influence they have, and our representatives are trying to use government power to control what these corporations do. As a result, Big Tech now spends large amounts of money to affect legislation pending in Congress. Since our members of Congress don’t understand Big Tech, they quickly follow wherever they think the lobbying dollars will follow. We need better representation in Congress by people who understand how important technology is to our economy, and how vital it is to let competition flourish under our current rules.