Blocked in China, why are Internet & social media giants protecting the protectionist?

The last few weeks have witnessed tech and social media giants come under the microscope like never before over the kind of content they allow on their platforms, and the logic and consistency that they apply while implementing their policies. The matter is multifaceted and geopolitical, and seems to put forth a new question for almost every new example cited. 

However, one aspect of this that sticks out like a sore thumb is these mostly US-based giants' squeamishness about China. As the world finally unshackles itself from commercial compulsions to speak up (belatedly) against China's atrocious policies, tech companies that have arguably suffered the most at the hands of China's protectionism appear not only hesitant but also evidently pro-China.

From 'Knock-offs' to cutting-edge

Over the last few decades, as India's giant neighbour has grown inexorably to become the second-largest economy in the world and a ruthlessly aggressive and expansionist one at that, it has routinely flouted numerous rules of doing business and profited immeasurably. Copyright law, for instance, appears to be non-existent in China. Cheap knock-offs of physical branded products have been flooded into global marketplaces for years, and over time, this modus operandi of business has allowed China to scale up its manufacturing to such an extent that it is a world leader both in terms of quantity and quality. For sure, the 'knock-offs' aren't cheap anymore.

Internet giants' hypocrisy

Nowhere is this same model more apparent than in the Internet space. Search and social media giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter aren't available in China. To understand the scope of what this means, just consider - you land in Beijing, connect your phone to Wi-Fi, open Chrome, and find that nothing works. Typing something in the search bar will result in no response, to such an extent that it feels like you're not connected to the Internet. Only if you enter the full URL directly, instead of 'searching' for it on your Android OS phones, will you get anywhere. Google Maps 'works' in the way that it allows a rudimentary map of Beijing to be downloaded, but try the GPS and you'll find that it doesn't know top from bottom. 

Google, Facebook and Twitter and the sub-products that they run to such great effect worldwide have local analogues in China. Baidu, Tencent, Weibo, WeChat, TikTok are multi-billion dollar products and companies on their own right, and the hypocrisy here is that they are freely allowed to list their apps and services on what the rest of the world considers the Internet. TikTok, for instance, is the most widely used app of its kind in India. Locally developed competitors haven't ever stood a chance.

In just the last few weeks, TikTok has come under the spotlight for allowing objectionable, fake and downright dangerous content on its platform. India's National Commission For Women has asked for it to be banned. Given the rising anti-China sentiment, and to encourage India to become not only self-reliant but also a globally acceptable democratic alternative to China, engineer and education reformer Sonam Wangchuk appealed to people to stop using Chinese products and apps. Amid this, an app floated by an Indian company to delete Chinese-made apps from Android phones went viral, but was then taken down from the Google Play Store. In its explanation, Google touted 'healthy competitive environment' - like China, right?

Twitter, meanwhile, is in its own world of pain. While criticism of Facebook in this regard is currently mostly just perfunctory - almost like 'and what about Facebook?' - Twitter has fallen afoul of the President Donald Trump in the US, and continues to make inexplicable and controversial decisions in India, such as the brief blocking of Amul's handle for putting up a customary news-oriented Topical creative.

Human biases versus 'Machine learning'  

In Twitter's case, and presumably in the others as well, what this has led to is a sort of 'lifting of the corporate veil' - that it is individual choices and leanings and not 'machine learning algorithms' or committees of unbiased independent experts/vetters/moderators who make these decisions. After Trump's tweet about mail-in vote rigging was flagged, his team pointed out that Twitter's head of security had been publicly anti-Trump in the past, while the White House asked why a war-mongering tweet filled with religious untruths by Iran's supreme leader was allowed?

In India, Twitter has been accused of having a leftist bias (by those on the right) on a range of things not limited to moderation and even 'blue tick' handles. Republic TV has had to question Twitter in the past for allowing viciously edited fake news to be proliferated over ultrasensitive matters. The company's CEO Jack Dorsey landed himself in a soup after unwittingly taking up the cause of 'Smash Brahminical Patriarchy'. 

But the question still stands - why protect protectionist China so much? The Dragon has been in the room a long while, and it's about time that technology companies start smarting from the fire it has been breathing at them just as much as all the other furniture.