Let’s add some color to the blame game – Protocol has dug into the blame being pointed at technology companies., and recounted stories just from last week:
- Massachusetts filed a complaint against Robinhood, claiming the company has not acted in the best interest of its users.
- Huawei and Alibaba have been revealed to have tested facial recognition software to identify Uighur Muslims in China
- Twitter promised to remove false COVID vaccine tweets, and partnered with AWS for timelines, meaning AWS will now help people see Twitter.
- The UK is blaming WhatsApp for fear of the COVID vaccines, particularly in Black, Asian, and minority ethinic people.
Putting aside the big Hack story, these alone would have shown the “regulation is coming” story. Now layer on the hack….
The reason I wanted to highlight this is to note that much of this is regionalized – Massachusetts, or the UK. Now extrapolate – no reason to believe this won’t happen at any state level in the US, or possibly down the local level.
As accountability in tech grows, providers should expect their local lawmakers to respond too.