Biden, champion of the tech giants?

1911 was a key year for Standard Oil. It was the year the US courts decided that the company had been misusing its size and market strength to restrict and distort competition, and the company was ordered to be broken up. Hence we got Esso and Mobil instead, joined a few decades later by BP, Shell, Chevron, Gulf Oil and Texaco, the ‘Seven Sisters’ that dominated the world petroleum market until the 1970s. Which was of greater benefit to the consumer, monopoly or oligopoly? The arguments rumble on.

It’s worthwhile looking back at some of those earliest criticisms of Standard. In the UK and in the EU, we’re hearing the same noises about the US tech giants, and like the opposition to standard oil, the arguments may appear to be about economics or freedom of speech, but are also very much about human mistrust of large, powerful corporations that are not subject to local or democratic control. And this is where the proffered solutions expose the supranationalists and separate them from the anti-Globalists; if you want Facebook to be subject to UK regulation in the UK, you’re likely an anti-Globalist. If you want some sort of over-riding international internet authority to have jurisdiction, you’re a dangerous supranationalist.

This is more than just who regulates your gran’s baby pictures on FB. If Biden beats Trump this November, a requirement to accept US hegemony in the form of the tech giants may be a cost attached to a trade deal – remember, socialism is a Globalist construct. For the EU, distaste for the tech giants is also about an endogenous dislike of what they see as transatlantic cultural imperialism. It’s been a long time growing; the first time back in the ’80s when I watched Die straßen von San Francisco dubbed into German in an Amsterdam hotel room you could see the way things were going. There are simply no home-grown alternatives to Netflix and Amazon Prime anywhere in the EU, and it hurts.

It may be an uncomfortable realisation for both those in the UK and the EU who dislike the power of the tech giants, but their best hope lies in Trump’s re-election in November. His recent spat with Twitter brought the revocation of a clause in a 1996 US law – ‘Section 230′ – into view. If he does so, it would cripple the power of the tech giants – and make many on this side of the Atlantic very happy. And this may just be the only policy aspect upon which Rejoiners and Brexiteers will ever agree.