“Digital Gangsters”: Are Facebook and Google a Challenge to Democracy?

Abstract

This paper analyses how Facebook and Google’s innovative business models might be posing a threat to democracy. Their economic concentration has made them powerful enough to enforce a technological determinism: all technology that happens must happen as it does and could not have happened any other way. This determinism actively violates the principle of representative government because it gives regulatory power to non-elected private companies. Furthermore, the individual autonomy of citizens is violated by requiring consent to unfair user agreements which incorporate indiscriminate surveillance and data-mining which is able to predict and modify behaviour. This paper aims to generate public debate about Facebook and Google’s challenges to democracy.