America Has Become a Digital Narco-State
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Citizens United v. FEC
15 min read
The article directly references the 2010 Citizens United ruling as enabling massive political donations by corporations. Understanding this landmark Supreme Court case and its implications for campaign finance is essential context for the article's argument about tech companies purchasing political influence.
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Digital Services Act
13 min read
The article extensively discusses the EU's Digital Services Act and the conflict between European regulators and American tech companies. Readers would benefit from understanding the specific provisions, history, and enforcement mechanisms of this legislation that Krugman positions as a counterweight to unregulated social media.
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Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal
15 min read
While not directly mentioned, this scandal is crucial context for understanding why European regulators developed frameworks like the Digital Services Act and why there is such tension between tech platforms and governments over data practices and platform accountability.
Imagine what would happen if the United States were to legalize the distribution and sale of heroin — and do so without any restrictions or regulations on how the drug is marketed and who can buy it.
Heroin distribution and sales would quickly become a huge, multibillion-dollar industry. They would become a significant part of GDP, even though heroin harms and often kills those who consume it. Given the increasingly naked corruption of U.S. politics, the heroin industry would be able to purchase massive political influence, enough to block any attempts to limit the harm it does — the harm it knows it does, because heroin industry executives would surely be aware of the damage their products inflict.
Through massive political donations — enabled by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling - and de facto bribery enabled via cryptocurrency deals, the industry would be able to enlist the U.S. government as an ally in its efforts to block regulation in other countries. For example, U.S. officials might threaten punitive tariffs against countries that try to limit and regulate heroin use.
If this story strikes you as extreme and implausible, here’s what you should know: replace “heroin” with “social media,” and this is a description of actual events.
Yesterday I wrote about how hostility to Europe is a central theme of the Trump administration’s recently released National Security Strategy. The main driver of that hostility appears to be MAGA fury at the nations of Europe for being excessively protective of civil liberties and insufficiently racist.
A secondary source of anti-Europe sentiment, however, is the tech broligarchy’s fury at the European Union’s Digital Services Act. The Act obliges large platforms to self-police a variety of potential injurious effects ranging from “dissemination of illegal content” to “negative consequences” for “physical and mental well-being.”
Is comparing social media to a dangerous drug over the top? Not according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s office, which in 2023 released an advisory titled “Social Media and Youth Mental Health” (download it now before RFK Jr. suppresses it!), which summarized extensive evidence of mental health damage to children and adolescents who consume excessive amounts of social media.
Furthermore, the operators of these platforms know that they’re doing harm. In 2021 the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Facebook Knows Instagram is Toxic for Teen Girls, Documents Show: Its own in-depth research shows a
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