Review
Do we really need to overthrow our ‘digital kings’ so that technology can be governed properly?
Jamie Susskind’s The Digital Republic argues that it’s not who owns Twitter that matters, but that Twitter is so powerful in the first place
When Elon Musk made a bid to take over Twitter, some hoped that it would improve our digital lives, while others feared we would lose immeasurably. But is the key question who is in charge of the digital leviathans we depend upon so much, or is it deeper than that?
Jamie Susskind would say the latter. In his new book, The Digital Republic, Susskind offers what he sees as a new concept of the relationships between state, citizen and the digital world. Early on, he introduces us to a concept he terms “republicanism”. Unsurprisingly, a digital republican opposes the existence of digital kings. The central feature of republicanism is, for Susskind, the idea that no individual or individual corporation should have untrammelled power over another in any dimension.
He frequently alludes to this principle, contrasting it with the idea that what matters more is whether those who have power over us use it (and are permitted to use it) well or badly. The book was written before Musk’s Twitter takeover bid, but Susskind would say the issue was not whether Musk would be more liberal than Jack Dorsey or other previous senior Twitter executives in managing the vast influence over our lives and politics that this digital business exerts, but whether any one person or business should be permitted to have such influence at all.
He contrasts his “republican” point of view with an opponent he characterises as dominant in policy circles, especially with respect to digital policy, which he terms “market individualism”. The market individualist supposedly believes that competition, self-regulation, contract and consent will, if permitted to do so, guide our digital lives to a social ideal. He argues that this is deeply flawed in many ways, both theoretical and in terms of its actual everyday outworkings.
In terms of the theoretical, he argues that consent is an illusion, that the choice to choose competitors is inactive or unavailable and that self-regulation is inadequate. More than that, he contends that we should care about our lives as political citizens as well as consumers and argues that the market individualist approach misses that essential dimension of our lives. As to the outworking, he spices up his commentary by peppering it with cases – some well-known, some less so – of bizarre or appalling side-effects of digital algorithms.
Susskind, author of Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech (2018), is also a practising barrister, and when it comes to solutions, his lawyerly side starts to show. He proposes standards, tech tribunals to provide a “counterpower” to the “digital power” of businesses, a new range of tech crimes and explores the principles of deciding guilt or innocence in a world of AI black-box learning algorithms.
Certification (kite-marking) and criteria for determining who is a “fit and proper person” to run a tech company also feature. Public inspection would enforce a principle he terms “openness” – which would be a duty. He contends that competition law (or “antitrust”, as he calls it for his American readers) needs to change for the assessment of digital industries. He proposes new rules for the treatment of our personal data and restrictions on the use and form of algorithms. As a Briton, I was comforted to see that his model of social media regulation was to impose on America the regulatory system we use in the UK.
In the early part of the book I felt Susskind offered plenty of interest to disagree with. By the end I found his vision underwhelming, though perhaps to be fair, what he was saying there might have seemed more radical and provocative to a US audience, given that in quite a few cases he was proposing that the US should adopt the principles of EU regulation (such as GDPR) or UK rules.
His starting point appeared to me to be astray in at least two significant ways. I suspect you will agree with him and disagree with me on the first, but perhaps agree with me on the second.
For Susskind it appears to be a huge problem if tech companies, their rules and algorithms sit beyond the reach of national governments, either literally (in the sense that the tech businesses are formally headquartered elsewhere though accessible globally) or practically (in that tech businesses are too powerful to take on). But to me it is by no means obvious that geographically-focused governments ought to be able to make all our rules or that other centres of power and rule-making that challenge them must be reined in.
Historically, religious bodies like the Catholic Church, emperors or those to whom we had made oaths of fealty could set rules and make commands of us that many people felt outranked the claims of governments. Perhaps, in that sense, the rise of digital empires-of-cyberspace is not a new development but, instead, a reversion to something older and more natural: a world of overlapping power claims and loyalties. Susskind thinks it obviously bad. I disagree.
Second, many of the examples Susskind quotes of digital things going wrong in racist, arbitrary or oppressive ways are less a matter of wicked or neglectful digital masters and more the inevitable falling-through-the-cracks that occurs when one is trying to moderate and manage billions of digital interactions per day. Over time we will get better, but they will never truly disappear. Perhaps a true “republican” ought really to object to the size of these platforms, rather than their ownership or power. Maybe it is fundamentally unhealthy for us to attempt to interact with millions of people at once.
I also found his later claims about the economic power of digital platforms unconvincing. Platforms change through time, both as better alternatives arise (Google ousting Yahoo; Facebook ousting MySpace) and as technology moves on (for example, the Cloud, smartphones and PlayStations undermining the dominant role of PCs or Macs; TikTok competing with Twitter). Economists who favour the current framework would say digital markets are “contestable” – ie, that even if most people only use one platform of one type now, it doesn’t really have monopoly power because if its prices become too high or it provides a poor service, some alternative firm will rise to replace it. Susskind doesn’t see that, or engage with that issue very much at all.
Overall, I felt he points us at something that might be important if we’ve got it wrong, and offered a pleasingly systematic way to set out his critique and his solutions. Many readers will find what he said more convincing than I ultimately did. Whether you read this to learn or to find things to disagree with, it will make you think and give you things to argue about. If reimagining our relationship with the digital world is your thing, this book is as good a place to start as any.
The Digital Republic by Jamie Susskind is published by Bloomsbury at £25. To order your copy for £19.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
