How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

Linux lessons

Why would any company limit itself this way? For one thing, it is

what some firms say they want. Microsoft in particular claims to

be a responsible tech giant. In January its chief executive, Satya Na-

della, told fellow plutocrats in Davos about the need for “data dig-

nity”—ie, granting users more control over their data and a bigger

share of the value these data create. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s presi-

dent, last year wrote a book in which he argued that technology

firms “must accept greater responsibility for the future”.

Governments increasingly concur. In its Digital Services Act, to

be unveiled later this year, the European Union is likely to demand

transparency and due process from social-media platforms. In

America, ideas for making them more accountable appear on both

sides of the partisan divide. “Citizens who are using these plat-

forms every day should have a say in what content is acceptable,”

says Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader who has the ear of Presi-

dent Donald Trump. Andrew Yang, a former Democratic presiden-

tial candidate, has launched a campaign to get online firms to pay

users a “digital dividend”. Getting ahead of such ideas makes more

sense than re-engineering platforms later to comply. 

Today’s social-media titans will resist change. But they may re-

consider, as Microsoft did with Linux. Mr Nadella’s predecessor,

Steve Ballmer, once called open-source software “a cancer”. Today,

Microsoft is one of the biggest users of and contributors to such

projects. Surreal as it sounds, 20 years from now Facebook and

Google may have reconstituted themselves for the better, too.

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Reconstituted