What does consolidation of the internet mean for society? It's complicated.
The internet is a wild and messy place. Thankfully, the folks at the nonprofit Internet Society are here to help make sense of it all with a detailed investigation into some of the thorniest problems facing the online world.
Namely, the group seeks to uncover how possible consolidation in the internet economy — as exemplified by the likes of Facebook and Amazon — is affecting the broader online ecosystem as a whole and to what degree that should concern us. Unfortunately, the organization's findings aren't all that encouraging.
The group, which was founded in 1992, determined in a Feb. 26 report that the current status of the corporate giant-dominated internet is so poorly understood that even government intervention might just further muck things up.
"To paraphrase Socrates, we know now that we know (almost) nothing," reads the report's conclusion. "Unlike most of our previous reports, therefore, we conclude without a clear set of findings or policy recommendations, but rather with an even longer set of questions that we think demand clear answers and rigorous data before we can formulate clear evidence-based recommendations for responses."
If that doesn't inspire confidence, well, then you're reading it correctly.
So, what are these questions that the Internet Society believes need answering before we can begin to fix things? If you've been paying attention over the last few years, you likely won't be too surprised.
"Could our increasing reliance on just a few companies in the Internet economy make them 'too big to fail?'" wonders the report. "Are there economic and technical dependencies on services that cannot be substituted that effectively create a set of permanent favourites?"
Imagine a future where Amazon is the only company providing web hosting, or Facebook (having acquired or crushed all competitors) is the only social media company. At that point, attempts to regulate digital conglomerates for the health of the internet and the people who use it would face serious headwinds.
The report poses another not-so-hypothetical question for those worried about the internet. Ultimately, can consolidation be avoided at all?
"Are there natural monopolies for some Internet [enabled] services," the report continues, "for which the most efficient number of firms is one?"
We should hope not. That the slow march of progress inevitably means less consumer choice is not a forgone conclusion, and broadband internet monopolies make it clear that corporate-side efficiency is not necessarily the same as a win for the common man.
Sadly, the Internet Society report does not offer any concrete answers to the questions it poses. However, that's not really the point. Often, the best first step in solving a problem is reaching agreement on what that problem is — an act that requires a common understanding possibly brought about by these very questions.
The report does makes one thing clear, though: the Internet Society believes we need to take possible regulation slowly — lest things get even worse.
"How do we ensure that any regulatory responses do not interfere with the Internet's underlying properties, i.e. that they do not 'break' the Internet?" the report wonders.
Of course, this question seems to brush past the possibility that the internet is already broken. Certainly, a look at the recurring privacy violations brought to us by our friends in Menlo Park combined with the terrors of Google-owned YouTube suggest this to be one case worth considering.
But the Internet Society is undeniably correct about its report's central thesis: We desperately need to get a grasp on what the consolidation of the internet means for all of us. And hey, there's no time like the present to start figuring that out.
