DNA Money Edit: Need to treat Google, Facebook as social influencers

Even as Facebook is facing the heat from the revelation of the Definers episode, Google is facing a new crisis. European Union plans to tax Google every time it shares a link at its Google News service to any news report generated by European news websites. The ostensible reason behind such a tax proposal, which is, in fact, not entirely a new concept, is to generate revenues for European media houses bleeding because of the growth of online news aggregators.

But the proposed 'link tax', as it is being called, is self defeating as taxing Google for using link to news websites, thereby discouraging such an aggregation service would invariably bring down traffic to that website. In a way, Google, by sharing the link, raises traffic to a news website which, in turn, helps that media outlet to attract advertisers.

Facebook is now criticised for doing what political parties have been doing for so long: appointing public relation agencies for "opposition research", disparaging opponents and even influence outcomes in the court of law.

There is a need to treat entities like Facebook, Google or Twitter not as ordinary corporate entities, but as behemoths acting as worldwide social influencers.

Judging their activities, standards of governance, ethical practices, societal responsibilities should be highly nuanced and a dynamic process, which the society needs to develop.

Would outcome of searches on Google be neutral or unbiased or would it be allowed to be influenced by advertisement support from entities whose names crop up in a research result? Such questions should be resolved just as deciding whether political parties be allowed to pay advertisements money to Facebook or Google.

Following the Definers expose, there are voices demanding removal of Mark Zuckerberg for the role of Facebook in an alleged election meddling or data privacy issues. The debate could be channelled to a wider space to include questions where an individual or even a board be given such unfettered power to influence society.