Alienor Rougeot: The not-so-green Silicon Valley
Photo Credit: (UPenn/Google Images)
Written by: Alienor Rougeot
Written with the help of digital rights activist Caroline Isautier, who provided me with the knowledge, but also the motivation, to think about these new challenges.
If fossil fuel executives are now losing in the court of public opinion, Big Tech executives are not doing much better in the hearts of climate justice activists. It’s time we talk about Big Tech.
When I started writing this, I thought to myself ‘Ok Boomer’. Like seriously, attacking social media and technology? What’s next, blaming millennials for climate change? Hear me out!
Social media networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, have been crucial to my activism. I’ve been able to connect with other youth striking for climate across Canada, and eventually around the world. Social media and these new communication tools have been life changers for many more, especially for voices who were previously excluded and silenced by the mainstream media and who through these platforms were able to be amplified. In no way am I denying the outstanding impact this has had on our lives. After all, would Black Lives Matter and MeToo have had the same reach without the famous hashtag?
In this article I’ll explore our duty to avoid the next crisis. I am asking that we avoid letting the attractive aspects of innovation trump our better judgement and our humanity, and learn from our dependence on fossil fuel. Fossil fuels seemed pretty awesome, I was told: affordable, abundant, allowing us to make huge improvements to our lives. Yet, we are now paying the price of blindly trusting the companies that provided this novelty. I hereby ask you not to let it happen again: in using social media and, more broadly, online platforms, let us ask for data privacy from the companies and digital literacy from our institutions, as well as a legal system that can answer to the unbridled change that comes with these platforms.
Big Tech: The Other Extractive Industry
Google and Facebook in Canada aren’t directly extracting resources from unceded indigenous land, although they certainly are operating on traditional indigenous territory in North America. They are champions of non-consensual data extraction. As we witness Climate Justice actions worldwide in 2019, it is increasingly important to address the new monopolies that threaten our communities.
The relationship between Big Tech and the climate crisis may not be the most obvious. This is not a coincidence: Google’s code of conduct stipulated “Don’t be Evil” for years, before updating to “Do The Right Thing” in 2015. Their informal, liberated corporate culture sent us signals they were a friendly breed of enterprise. Let’s face it, it also helps that their services are free to use! We have learnt to be weary about the man in the suit, but what about the man in the white T-shirt behind his computer?
Yet Big Tech’s free-minded development model is based on excess: excess screen consumption to sell more ads, algorithms that value excessive reactions in selecting which content to show, and excessive speed of change. Wasn’t “Move Fast and Break Things” Facebook’s initial motto? At a time when we must challenge the very idea of infinite growth, having large, profit-seeking companies relentlessly pushing for that model is distracting at best, dangerous at worst.
Just like uncontrolled climate change, unregulated and unbridled digital change leaves no room for adaptation. And experts already recommend “Digital moderation” as the secret to a healthy digital diet..
Solutions to climate change go beyond plastic bans and recycling. At the core of climate justice lies community empowerment, trustworthy institutions and news sources, as well as efficient democracies. However, under Google and Facebook’s rule, fake news was allowed to spread exponentially. This has devastating effects for the climate justice community when access to scientific facts is obstructed by conspiracy and denial videos, not only from the individual, but often from the industry that abuses of the “free speech” ideal the internet has provided to spread paid lies. This is even worse when entire elections are affected, not only in the US and the UK but also in the Global South: take Trinidad and Tobago’s election, which was carefully manipulated by no one else than a British company using American social media.
Add to that the constant warning of physical and mental health professionals who warn us about addiction, disconnection and heightened anxiety and depression linked to usage of social media platform and video games. Just like globalization was supposed to connect us all to make us live better, but ended up harming many for the benefit of the few, is Big Tech’s public commitment to a ‘more connected world’ truly the endgame? At a time where we need to refocus on traditional knowledge, solidarity, community and relearning for the sake of survival on this rapidly warming Earth; are Google and Facebook truly our allies?
Caroline Isautier reported on research that shows that for some, this slowly creeping, tech-enabled isolation has prevented them from feeling a sense of collective interest, and therefore, a need for collective mobilization in this time of crisis. For others, as climate anxiety rises, seeking comfortable refuge in the digital world has led to inaction in the real world. This does not apply to me and might not apply to you. But in this fight where we need “All hands on deck”, we cannot afford mass apathy.
Greenwashing Big Tech won’t Do, Respecting Citizen Rights will
Big Tech companies like Google have long leveraged Big Tech’s image as a clean solution to our cities’ problems. The so-called Toronto waterfront “Smart City” contracted out to Google-affiliated Sidewalk Labs puts forth great promise of an environmentally-friendly, tech-enabled, urban development. This comes at the cost of major governance issues that have led to a strong citizen-led #BlockSidewalk movement and a series of resignations from the Waterfront Toronto governing body in 2018 & 2019.
Climate Justice, once again, demands more than “green tech ideas”, it demands respect for citizens and the public good.
To fully lift the secrecy veil on Big Tech’s impact on the Climate Crisis, let it be known all those “free” videos, photos and smileys consume 4% of world carbon emissions today (more than airline travel), with a trend towards 8% of global emissions in 2025. Companies like Facebook and Google may present a friendly face, but unlike big corporations before them, they should be held accountable now, not after decades go by.
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